LINES ON HER DEATH.
WRITTEN EXPRESSLY FOR THE NEW YORK CLIPPER
There is no masking now, nor need of it,
For here the King Death himself doth sit;
And many a heart felt sigh and tear
Are breath’d and shed o’er Mary’s [Illegible]
Her looks are placid; on herbrow
There is no mark of suffering now;
But where the arch smile we were wont to see
Always allied to tones of melody?
And where the voice? Alas! We ask in vain.
Upon our senses cheer’d, with funeral rounds
Spread all around; while free from any sounds
Save those of grief subdued. Death’s chamber is.
How chang’d from what it was to what not ‘tis.
And those, her friends! How alter’d now their look!
Those who so lately with her their parts took!
“She should have died hereafter;” little more
Than half her race was run: and we should o’er
Her genial humor joy, and gladly feel
The merrier part of what the stage can yield;
Confessing that to ire it brings a calm.
And to the sore in spirit holds a balm.
We owed her much—full many an hour,
Galdden’d and brighten’d by her mimic power,
Spirits made gleeful by her sunny smile,
Free, as an infant’s, from all sort of guile.
Take your last look of her. That face must be
Soon shut from human sight eternally.
And as you do so, breathe a humble prayer
That she, with angels, heavenly joy doth share.
* * * * *
Lay all that’s mortal of her in the earth,
With the engraven record of her death and birth,
And scatter roses o’er the grave she fills,
While sorrow for her loss your bosom thrills.
“ashes to ashes, dust to dust”—no more
For her whose acting on life’s stage is o’er.
New York Clipper 3/7/1868: 877. Print.