Would the mother, if she could, forget the
child that slumbers beneath the flower-crowned sod of the family cemetery?
"Where," in the beautiful language of Irving, "is the child, that would
willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to
lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom
he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he
most loved and he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of
its portals, would accept consolation that was to be bought by
forgetfulness? And when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the
gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive
agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away
into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness,
who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes
throw a passing cloud even over the bright hour of gayety, yet who would
exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No;
there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song; there is a recollection
of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living!" How
passionately we cling to those memories of a sainted mother, which crowd in
rapid succession upon our minds!
"Weep not for her! Her memory is the shrine
Of pleasing thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers,
Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline,
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers.
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