Under the Violets

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1. HER hands are cold; her face is white;
2. No more her pulses come and go;
3. Her eyes are shut to life and light;--
4. Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
5. And lay her where the violets blow.
6.  
7. But not beneath a graven stone,
8. To plead for tears with alien eyes;
9. A slender cross of wood alone
10. Shall say, that here a maiden lies
11. In peace beneath the peaceful skies.
12.  
13. And gray old trees of hugest limb
14. Shall wheel their circling shadows round
15. To make the scorching sunlight dim
16. That drinks the greenness from the ground,
17. And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
18.  
19. When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
20. And through their leaves the robins call,
21. And, ripening in the autumn sun,
22. The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
23. Doubt not that she will heed them all.
24.  
25. For her the morning choir shall sing
26. Its matins from the branches high,
27. And every minstrel-voice of Spring,
28. That trills beneath the April sky,
29. Shall greet her with its earliest cry.
30.  
31. When, turning round their dial-track,
32. Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
33. Her little mourners, clad in black,
34. The crickets, sliding through the grass,
35. Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
36.  
37. At last the rootlets of the trees
38. Shall find the prison where she lies,
39. And bear the buried dust they seize
40. In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
41. So may the soul that warmed it rise!
42.  
43. If any, born of kindlier blood,
44. Should ask, What maiden lies below?
45. Say only this: A tender bud,
46. That tried to blossom in the snow,
47. Lies withered where the violets blow.