This grassy hillock, with its rustic urn
And its slight hedge of snowy roses, reared
By some pious hand, sepulchres the dust
Of one most beautiful. A sweeter child
Than her who slumbers in this holy ground
You would not meet in all the village round.
She perished in the morning of her life
Ere yet the frosts of trouble, or of crime
Had chilled the gentle freshness of her youth.
She was of all the rural feasts the queen —
The merriest, when the dance went round the tree
At Evening's yellow fall.

The bird, whose song
Doth charm the sylvan valley, when the Eve
Is darkening all the golden woods around,
Might not surpass the compass of her voice
In its deep, delicate richness! In the grave
She sleepeth now, where every thing is mute!
Long shall the poor man, and the aged dame,
And orphan child, remember her sweet smile
And her benignant acts; for well she loved
To minister unto the broken heart,
And help the poor, blind beggar on his way,
And shelter from the sharp and pitless blast,
The outcast, and the poor way-faring man,
And ever there the grateful traveller blessed
That fair young face that smiled his gloom away,
And made his very heart, " to sing for joy."
And here her lover rests! —

Beneath yon ridge
On which the rank weeds wave, are placed the bones,
The plume, and bloody sword, the spur and scarf,
Of one who sought for fame, and found it not;
He was a wild, and reckless, wayward boy,
Ever the leader of the village school,
In all their thoughtless sports, — one stout of heart,
And strong of hand, and foremost in the rush
Of boyish battle. Yet his fiery soul
Would melt when Sorrow told her wretched tale,
Or Pain, the gloomy history of her grief,
Or Age, the trials of her life.

The youth
Had pledged his honest love to that fair girl,
And in the innocent fondness of her heart
She gave to him her love. But time wore on,
And he had heard the savage trump of war
Sound in the peaceful vale, and heard the tramp
And neighing of the charger, and the clang
Of martial arms, and shouts of armed men,
And saw the garish flag of battle float
Before the cottage of his infancy.
He thirsted for the stirring din of War,
And struggled for that vain bubble, Glory!
" E'en at the cannon's mouth."

And he came back,
A wounded, sick, and broken-hearted man,
To linger out a few, brief days on earth,
And die, and be at rest; — and by his side
They, in a few days, placed her lovely dust.
" After life's fitful fever they sleep well!"