[Editor: This poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton was published in Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics (1908).]
The Grave.
Alas! thy uncommunicating eyes
Are prest in clay; I reach a wistful hand
And touch the earth that cannot understand —
The earth that on thy earth impassive lies.
Ah, cruel, sacred, meagre plot of land,
From which the early grasses fragrant rise;
Revered sod, shield her through the ages, and
Transmute her grace to floral litanies.
Wind, rain, and sun, strong day, and secret night,
Be guardians of Imagination’s child.
She loved ye well, your gentleness and might;
Her blood pulsed with ye, tender, pensive, wild;
Give her your calm, your passion infinite,
So she be blest, and I be reconciled.
Source:
Mary E. Fullerton, Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics, Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1908, p. 12
Editor’s notes:
blest = (archaic) blessed
litanies = plural of “litany”; see: litany
litany = a long list or series of complaints, problems, or issues; a long, repetitive, or tedious account, list, recitation, or speech; a ceremonial religious form of prayer comprising of a series of invocations or supplications, commonly with a clergyman or singer chanting a prayer, with the congregation responding with ritualised phrases, often in a repetitive fashion (plural: litanies)
prest = (archaic) pressed (distinct from two other archaic meanings: ready, a loan of money)
thy = (archaic) your
ye = (archaic; dialectal) you (still in use in some places, e.g. in Cornwall, Ireland, Newfoundland, and Northern England; it can used as either the singular or plural form of “you”, although the plural form is the more common usage)
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