Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.
On the Death of Colonel Bainbrigge’s Daughter, 1815Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
W
In life’s happy morning, hath hid from our eyes,
Ere sin threw a blight o’er the spirit’s young bloom,
Or earth had profan’d what was born for the skies.
Death chill’d the fair fountain, ere sorrow had stain’d it;
’Twas frozen in all the pure light of its course,
And but sleeps till the sunshine of Heaven has unchain’d it,
To water that Eden where first was its source.
Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,
In life’s happy morning, hath hid from our eyes,
Ere sin threw a blight o’er the spirit’s young bloom,
Or earth had profan’d what was born for the skies.
Our gayest and loveliest, lost to us now,
Ere life’s early lustre had time to grow pale,
And the garland of Love was yet fresh on her brow.
Oh, then was her moment, dear spirit, for flying
From this gloomy world, while its gloom was unknown—
And the wild hymns she warbled so sweetly, in dying,
Were echoed in Heaven by lips like her own.
Weep not for her—in her spring-time she flew
To that land where the wings of the soul are unfurl’d:
And now, like a star beyond evening’s cold dew,
Looks radiantly down on the tears of this world.