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light streamed on it through the coloured window - a window, where
the boughs of trees were ever rustling in the summer, and where the
birds sang sweetly all day long. With every breath of air that stirred
among those branches in the sunshine, some trembling, changing
light, would fall upon her grave.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust! Many a young hand
dropped in its little wreath, many a stifled sob was heard. Some - and
they were not a few - knelt down. All were sincere and truthful in their
sorrow.
The service done, the mourners stood apart, and the villagers closed
round to look into the grave before the pavement-stone should be
replaced. One called to mind how he had seen her sitting on that very
spot, and how her book had fallen on her lap, and she was gazing with
a pensive face upon the sky. Another told, how he had wondered
much that one so delicate as she, should be so bold; how she had
never feared to enter the church alone at night, but had loved to linger
there when all was quiet, and even to climb the tower stair, with no
more light than that of the moon rays stealing through the loopholes
in the thick old wall. A whisper went about among the oldest, that she
had seen and talked with angels; and when they called to mind how
she had looked, and spoken, and her early death, some thought it
might be so, indeed. Thus, coming to the grave in little knots, and
glancing down, and giving place to others, and falling off in whispering
groups of three or four, the church was cleared in time, of all but the
sexton and the mourning friends.
They saw the vault covered, and the stone fixed down. Then, when the
dusk of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred
stillness of the place - when the bright moon poured in her light on
tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it
seemed to them) upon her quiet grave - in that calm time, when
outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of
immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust
before them - then, with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned
away, and left the child with God.
Oh! it is hard to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will teach,
but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a
mighty, universal Truth. When Death strikes down the innocent and
young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free,
a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk
the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on
such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In
the Destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his
power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven.
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