graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel voice of spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.

XI

You will know, perhaps, in the course of half an hour's reading, what
has been haunting my hours of sleep and waking for months. I cannot
tell, of course, whether you are a nervous person or not. If, however,
you are such a person,--if it is late at night,--if all the rest of the
household have gone off to bed,--if the wind is shaking your windows as
if a human hand were rattling the sashes,--if your candle or lamp is low
and will soon burn out,--let me advise you to take up some good quiet
sleepy volume, or attack the "Critical Notices" of the last Quarterly
and leave this to be read by daylight, with cheerful voices round, and
people near by who would hear you, if you slid from your chair and came
down in a lump on the floor.

I do not say that your heart will beat as mine did, I am willing to
confess, when I entered the dim chamber. Did I not tell you that I was
sensitive and imaginative, and that I had lain awake with thinking what
were the strange movements and sounds which