After-Bloom

Sweet winter roses, stainless as the snow, As was thy life, O tender heart and true! A cross of lilies that our tears bedew, A garland of the fairest flowers that grow. And filled with fragrance as the thought of thee, We lay, with loving hand, upon thy breast, Wrapt in the calm of Death's great mystery; Ours still to feel the pain, the unlanguaged woe, The bitter sense of loss, the vague unrest, And wear unseen the cypress-leaf and rue. Thinking, the while, of lovelier flowers that blow In everlasting gardens of the blest. That wither not like these, and never shed Their rare and heavenly odors for the dead.