Burial of a German Emigrant's Child at Sea

No flowers to lay upon his little breast,No passing-bell to call his spirit home,But gliding gently to his place of rest,Parting, 'mid tears, at eve, the ocean foam.

No turf was round him,—but the lifting surgeEntombed those lids that closed so calm and slow,While solemn winds, like a cathedral dirge,Sighed o'er his form a requiem sad and low.

Ah, who shall tell the maddening grief of loveThat swept her heart-strings in that hour of woe?—Weep, childless mother, but O, look aboveFor aid that only Heaven can now bestow.

Gaze, blue-eyed mourner, on that silken hair,—Weep, but remember that thy God will standBeside thee here in all this, wild despair,As on the green mounds of thy Fatherland.