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LINES, ON THE SAD FATE OF A YOUNG GIRL.[1]
From the water's dread embraces
Gently lift that tender form;
Cold that heart, its tenant lifeless,
Once so fair, so pure, so warm.
Ah! how altered—mark those features,
Beauty's home, joy's biding-place;
See those lines, pale, cold, and rigid,
Stamped by death's abiding trace.
- ↑ A beautiful girl, named Kearney, who was attached to a military officer, followed the regiment to Dublin, in the latter end of 1851. Some time after her arrival in the city, having a quarrel with her lover, she threw herself into the canal, where her lifeless body was found. The allusion to the girl's country in the lines will be understood when it is mentioned, that, at the period of the occurrence, Ireland had scarcely recovered from the effects of the famine of 1848, and which, even in a land for centuries subject to frequently recurring evils, has not been surpassed in its horrifying details.—Author's Note, May, 1852.
