Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1866-01-28
TO THEMEMORT OFOUR BELOVED BEAD,


Awake, my mournful muse!
A noble task, thy saddened Tyre lnvokesi
Prepare no joyful prelude to thy strains;
No festal symphonies, no music wreathes,
From beds and bowers OF gayIy lowered
thought,
But twine more cypress bcughs amid the
dead,
The withered blackening ones, that erst 30
long
Have dangled round thy silver crested harp,
And drank and dried the fountain OF thy
song.
Bright, pure white Spring had seen her vest
ments gay,
All dappled Ger with specks Of precious
blood!
Maternal Summer, kind, forgetting all
Her joys Of richest fruits and flowers, had
stopped
To drspe with moss a thousand new msds
graves;
Autumn, in woe unutterable, beheld
His forests proud IN gold and crimson robes
Bow their grand crests beneath the spoilers
axe.
Winter, unsympathizing, banked high up
His piles Of snow, and flung the singing hail,
Laughing to see the hardy veteran fall
AID this from year to year, high carnival
Was this thou kept'st, Oh Death. Unsatished
Was it, thou deemest all this carnage Wild,
Too gross TO suit thy dainty palate's tasteF
Revolving at the feast so hugely spread
You watched with sharpening appetite,
When Peace, long scared away, came tremb-
ling back,
And smiled! And Hope peeped up her beau
tious head,
When dull Despair, that chilled the maidsn's
heart,
And froze the winly tear began TO thaw,
And lips were moved in prayer FOR no more
graves,
When brown-eheezed youths and grey haired
men
Yelling the fires within their eyes,
In a disk Of tears and sobbing signs,
Forgot the old defiant air
As they knelt with the home ones in
prayer,
IN such a sacred hcUr-your mission sped;
Mean triumph OF a moments space; no more
You bore a Christian to the quiet land,
And Heaven won all the gloryi
Thro' veal and woe, thro' every form OF al
That e'er has cried 20 Heaven from any orb,
Which God has planted in the Heavens blue
space;
Thro' tortuous ways, where b~ristling foes de-
fed,
And bold, beleaguering war planted the flames
And reaped a burning whirlwind in its track
True as the sun, steady As polar star,
Mighty in right. and right-in his clear course
He strove at honors helm TO breast the
storm!
nor paused. nor yielded once tn vanquished
Hope,
lowering to clasp her phantom loves-van'
ished!
And all was night-nor yet has broke the
morn.
Almost before our loving lips had framed
The welcome. weicome.home, our hands had
felt
The dear familiar grasp or eyes had looked
Their world OF meaning treasures in a glance
The cruel message came. But not too soon :
The spirit ready-cIOthed in faith I'm Christ,
SubImely rising from its shell OF clay,
Went out forever 10 its promised joys.
There is a grief that yields to lighter mood,
When words OF love inspiring comfort breathe
Another grief. whose all absorbing woe
But thirsts, and thirsts the more as counsel
kind.
Unheeded falls upon the listless ear.
Ere time has brought his box OF Lethean
balms,
or bound the tendrils Of the bleeding heart
In wresthes Of sad but pleasant memories.
Moaning is prodtless where death has been;
our tears, like morning mists, but shroud
The empurpled splsndor Of his going forth.
In Elmw0od-s silent shades, where art n ma
ture vie
To win the soul from grief they buried him
But not his excellence. The lips that said,
"Oh sing 10 me Of Heaven" are singing it
] T, anm.T r-,4 III. L--.r. It'll 49,
That giOwed with human tenderness, bounds
yet
Thrilled and energizsd by heavenly sounds.
Those hands that nobly did their due, are now
Prepared for Use on more extended planes,
That own no confines but eternity.
The garlands green ntwined around his tomb,
By lovely maidens' hands will gather dews,
And in the soft light Of the lambert moon,
Nightly, with pearly tears viii damp the yell
low clay.
The twink-ing grass, an early visitant,
Liz lowly nuns beside the dying couch,
VIII hide the .~roughness of the new turned
sod.
With coverid enwove Of greenest sprigs.
The violet meek, leaving her messy seat
Beside the fountains brim, dove-eyed
VIII watch in fearful pity near his head.
Inc sweet Wllu rose from every tlneIul lear,
VIII shed its perfume on the hurming air
Nature, from her abundant stores, will send
The wild f1rget-me-nots and daises white.
And these eutice the warblers from the groves.
Anon, Kind hands viii rear the marble shaft,
And richer plants replace those umid ones;
And rose Tipped shells within whose mystic
depth
An ever murmuring ocean music dweIls,
VIII make this burial place a fairy land.
Oh, why is it that time but binds mors
strong
The chains that link US TO the buried oness
Because the dead die not; nor do they sleep.
These lovely things with which we load their
tombs
Are gifts which soul has brought TO soul-the
one,
StLu bound by mortal Igaments. seeking
By every act Of human kindiness
10 come into the Eden it has lost.
The margin Of the tomb is where nature
More nearly r~easssrts her primal joys.
All, deathl thou art an usher then at LAST
So cold; but kind-austere but friendly still;
Tired Of the thorn crown, and the bleeding
path;
The painting Of the soul beneath its weight
You heard, and gently oped the door
when To-
Are angles waiting with the rose crown
there!