HER hands are cold; her face is white; <br /> No more her pulses come and go; <br /> Her eyes are shut to life and light;-- <br /> Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, <br /> And lay her where the violets blow. <br /> <br /> But not beneath a graven stone, <br /> To plead for tears with alien eyes; <br /> A slender cross of wood alone <br /> Shall say, that here a maiden lies <br /> In peace beneath the peaceful skies. <br /> <br /> And gray old trees of hugest limb <br /> Shall wheel their circling shadows round <br /> To make the scorching sunlight dim <br /> That drinks the greenness from the ground, <br /> And drop their dead leaves on her mound. <br /> <br /> When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, <br /> And through their leaves the robins call, <br /> And, ripening in the autumn sun, <br /> The acorns and the chestnuts fall, <br /> Doubt not that she will heed them all. <br /> <br /> For her the morning choir shall sing <br /> Its matins from the branches high, <br /> And every minstrel-voice of Spring, <br /> That trills beneath the April sky, <br /> Shall greet her with its earliest cry. <br /> <br /> When, turning round their dial-track, <br /> Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, <br /> Her little mourners, clad in black, <br /> The crickets, sliding through the grass, <br /> Shall pipe for her an evening mass. <br /> <br /> At last the rootlets of the trees <br /> Shall find the prison where she lies, <br /> And bear the buried dust they seize <br /> In leaves and blossoms to the skies. <br /> So may the soul that warmed it rise! <br /> <br /> If any, born of kindlier blood, <br /> Should ask, What maiden lies below? <br /> Say only this: A tender bud, <br /> That tried to blossom in the snow, <br /> Lies withered where the violets blow.<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/under-the-violets/
