And now the bell, -the bell she had so often heard by night and day,
listened to with solemn pleasure, now, they as a living voice,
rung its remorseless toll for her, so young, so beautiful, so good.
Decrepit age, and vigorous life, and blooming youth, and helpless infancy,
poured forth on crutches, in the pride of strength, and health, in the full blush of promise,
the mere dawn of life, to gather round her tomb.
Old men were there whose eyes were dim and the senses failing.
Grandames who might have died ten years ago;
and still being old: the deaf, the blind, the lame,
the living dead in many shapes and forms,
to see the closing of this early grave.
Along the crowded path they bore her now;
pure as the fallen snow that covered it;
whose day on earth had been as fleeting;
under that place, where she had sat when Heaven in mercy brought her to a peaceful spot,
she passed again, and the old church received her in its quite shade.
They carried her to one old nook, where she had many and many a time sat musing,
and laid their burden softly on the pavement.
The light streamed on it through the colored window,
- a window where the boughs of trees were ever rustling in the summer,
and where the birds sang sweetly all day long.
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