Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1873-08-27
An Old Grave.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT sPoFFoRD.

Ruth, daughter of Chrisp and Mary Lee,
Lies here in the hope to rise again:
She was born in seventeen forty eight,
And died in eighteen hundred and one.
The gift of grace to her was free,
She carried her light in.the path of men,
And went from the darkness of this estate
Whittier God himself is the light and sun.
Thus the stone was the legend spelled,
When the yellow lchens were scraped away,
Though half century's storm and shower
Had smOothed the wrinkled lettering out
And the scutcheon the carven cherubs held
Had slowly faded day after day,
While, fresh they bloomed in their earliest hour,
The wantoning vines crept all about.
And soon deciphercd, it stood sole sign
For forty-three long-forgotten years.
Lonely and childess and sad, perhaps,
OF outward grace and comfort shorn
And the day with its wide Indifferent shine
1t has learn ed to know and the nights chill tears
And round it the trains wild echo flaps
With screaming speed for the eager morn.
Beneath the seasons heavy hand
The sunken slate leaned down the grave,
While Mays to Aprils have swiftly wheeled,
And slow Arcturus has reddened the snow;
And it sucked the gloom from the sky and land
To that spot where the scauty grasses wave.
Into the heart of its sombre shield,
Till the earth spread laughing and bright below.
For over the slope and far away,
Bathed in the beautiful light of day,
Dimpled with shadows of floating cloud,
And blue in the distant summer still,
The level fields of the champaign lay,
Golden and brown from new -mOwn hay;
And behind some lofty and lucid shroud
The slant sun rained on q lifted hill.
| So when 1 saw it first, and so,
Had the burial mound refined to, glass,
And Ruth forsaken her sheep to look,
She had seen the country Tapped in June,
While the loud bee hummed in the clover blow,
And, far from the idle feet that pass,
Like the rustic of any limp i'd brook,
The trostle futed his broken tune.
Did the heavens let down upon Ruth's birthnght
| Larger and lower their thro bbing stars,
| The river, brimming bis banks, flow clear,
| And low winds ripple silken stir?
| Did meteor thrust its wells of light,
| And kingly essences burst their bars,
| All for the love of the new life here,
| And the possibilities born with her?
| And hour by hour did the heavens grow pale,
The river go by to swell the tile,
And the spirits that wait on awful chance
| Lift their plumes for loftier flight :?
Did the great heart fater, the great ia tie fail,
| And the moments that had been glorined
Slip into the slow and idle dance
| Of the hours that bring about the light?
Or sad spark stuck TO fokering fire
| Was that life held close from the gladsome wine
| And set in all too narrow a niche,
| Where rarely breath from full heaven came,
Till the morning spirit, futtering higher,
Drew the fluent air expressed and thinned,
And wasting the fragrant oils and rich,
1t turned and fed on its sacred flame?
Ah what matter Her life she led
Seventy years and more ago.
Over her slumber the dew distills,
| The Wild bird warbles, the wild rose blooms,
| As DER the queen who lies crowned and dead.
1t may be the innocent natures know
That well Gods purpose such life fulflls
AS the lives that lead to lofty tombS.
For haply the simple life of Ruth,
Unthrilled by lovers tender touch,
Untitled by mothers sweet content,
Fed with no honeyed joys at all,
| Reached to the head of things, in truth,
And moulded divine results as much
As the life to which an empire bent
| While it held the same brown dust in thrall!
The low cloud blushed and burned to see
The sun that over her hovered at last;
Soon would the dews shine all about,
And the great procession of stars would climb
AS much for her still, said, as for me-
While 1 staid till the sweet-breathed cattle passed
Nor yet has her ripple quite died out
That whispers along my lingering rhymel
| -Harper's Magazine for September.