AT AN OLD GRAVE.
Ruth, daughter of Crisp and Mary Lee, Lies here in the hope to rise again:She was born in seventeen forty-eight, And died in eighteen hundred and one.The gift of grace to her was free, She carried her light in the path of men,And went from the twilight of this estate Whither God himself is the light and sun.
Thus on the stone was the legend spelled, When the yellow lichens were scraped away,Though myriad touches of storm and shower Had smoothed the wrinkled lettering out,And the scutcheon the carven cherubs held Had slowly faded day after day;While, fresh as they bloomed in their earliest hour, The wantoning vines crept all about.
