And guessed the face within the frame--
Her mother's! who they said was dead:
And hence the crape--appropriate sign.
But why debarred the simple meed
To look upon her face divine,
And as she looked revive again
Those lines that had been once impressed
By love upon her infant brain,
And never thence to be defaced?
Not ever fairest painted theme,
Or triumph of the graver's art,
Could match the image of her dream
Enshrined within a daughter's heart--
So gently kind, so sweetly fair:
They were the features she assigned
To creatures of yon upper air
When they look down on humankind:
And oft she sighed that morn would shine
When that dark crape she could remove,
And she would feast those eydent eyne
On those that taught her first to love;
And oft she scanned her own sweet face,
Reflected to her anxious view,
To see if therein she could trace
Those lineaments--the _first_ she knew.



VI.