Poems (Chitwood)/The Dying Betrothed
THE DYING BETROTHED.
Sweet sister come closer, I scarcely can speak,Let me feel your warm kisses fall soft on my cheek.The angels are calling me, kindly away;But, ere my departure, I've something to say.
Tell him, very softly, my sweet sister, tellThat my last dying wish was to bid him farewell; But that hope was imparted, amid all the pain,That I left him but only to meet him again.
Oh, let him not come with a sob to my tomb—The damp mold, the coffin, will fill him with gloom;Not think of the lip where his love-kisses lay,As moldered to dust and corruption away.
But tell him to let my affection be laid,Like a rose, in his heart, not to wither and fade;To think of me when aught, that's lovely or fair,Rocks his pulses to music, thanksgiving, and prayer.
Oh, I shall be with him, I fondly believe,In the golden-eyed morn and the shadowy eve,Unseen, like the dew-drop that sunbeams exhale,Unheard, like the snow-flake that falls in the vale.
It will be a sweet thought, when he pensively strays,In the fair afternoon of the Summer-time days—When he lifts up his eye to the deep, dreamy air,To think I am with him, tho' silently, there.
Fold softly about me my wedding-robe light;My cheek will be like it, so perfectly white;Alas, when I made it how little I thought'Twas my own chilling shroud I so hopefully wrought.
My veil, dearest sister, forget not to place,Encircled with rose-buds, about my cold face.Let me kiss you—my eyes are so darkened and dim,—Another kiss, sister—this last one for him.