"Here a deeper and serener charm
To all is given,
And blessed memories of the faithful dead
O'er wood and vale, and meadow-stream have shed
The holy hues of heaven."
How indelibly does memory paint the image of a departed child upon the
mother's heart! No flight of years; no distance from the grave in which he
slumbers, can erase the image. It will be ever fresh, and, with awakening
power, mingle with her tears and glow in her fondest hopes. Though time and
distance and vicissitudes may calm her troubled heart, and cause her to
settle down into tranquility of feeling; but these can never destroy the
tenacity and vividness of her memory. Even then those objects to which it
fondly clings, become the theme of her holiest and her happiest thoughts;
and she retains them with a passionate ardor, exceeded only by that with
which she clung to the living child. Her greatest pleasure is, to retire
from the busy cares of the world, to some solitude where she may sit among
flowers that remind her of the one that withered in her arms, and meditate
upon him who slumbers beneath the clods of the valley. Oh, these are sweet
and precious moments to her; and the tears which are then drawn from the
deep well-springs of reminiscence, are sacred to him with whom she in
spirit there communes. There with, rapture she remembers
"All his winning ways,
His pretty, playful smiles,
His joy, his ecstasy,
His tricks, his mimicry,
And all his little wiles;
Oh! these are recollections
Round mothers' hearts that cling--
That mingle with the tears
And smiles of after years,
With oft awakening!"
Memory links together the loved, ones of home though they be widely
separated from each other, some on earth, and some in eternity.
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