fter they were gone, I took my shawl and went out on the lawn. There
was a young pine dense enough to shield me from the sun, sitting under
which I could see the funeral-procession as it wound along the river's
edge up toward the burying-ground, a mile beyond the station. But there
was no sun to trouble me; cool gray clouds brooded ominously over all
the sky; a strong south-wind cried, and wailed, and swept in wild gusts
through the woods, while in its intervals a dreadful quiet brooded over
earth and heaven,--over the broad weltering river, that, swollen by
recent rain, washed the green grass shores with sullen flood,--over
the heavy masses of oak and hickory trees that hung on the farther
hill-side,--over the silent village and its gathering people. The
engine-shriek was borne on the coming wind from far down the valley.
There was an air of hushed expectation and regret in Nature itself that
seemed to fit the hour to its event.

Soon I saw the crowd about the station begin to move, and presently the
funeral-bell swung out its solemn tones of lamentation; its measured,
lingering strokes, mingled with the woful shrieking of the wind and the
sighing of the pine-tree overhead, made a dirge of inexpressible force
and melancholy. A weight of grief seemed to settle on my very breath: it
was not real sorrow; for, though I knew it well, I had not felt yet that
Frank was dead,--it was not real to me,--I could not take to my stunned
perceptions the fact that he was gone. It is the protest of Nature,
dimly conscious of her original eternity, against this interruption of
death, that it should always be such an interruption, so incredible, so
surprising, so new. No,--the anguish that oppressed me now was not the
true anguish of loss, but merely the effect of these adjuncts; the pain
of want, of separation, of reaching in vain after that which is gone, of
vivid dreams and tearful waking,--all this lay in wait for the future,
to be still renewed, still suffered and endured, till time should be no
more. Let all these pangs of recollection attest it,--these involuntary
bursts of longing for the eyes that are gone and the voice that is
still,--these recoils of baffled feeling seeking for the one perfect
sympathy forever fled,--these pleasures dimmed in their first
resplendence for want of one whose joy would have been keener and
sweeter to us than our own,--these bitter sorrows crying like children
in pain for the heart that should have