Tread softly--bow the head--
In reverent silence bow;
There's one in that poor shed,
One by that humble bed,
Greater than thou!
Oh, change! Stupendous change!
Fled the immortal one!
A moment here, so low,
So agonized, and now--
Beyond the sun!
--Caroline Bowles.
For some time Hannah Worth and Herman Brudenell remained standing by the
bedside, and gazing in awful silence upon the beautiful clay extended
before them, upon which the spirit in parting had left the impress of
its last earthly smile!
Then the bitter grief of the bereaved woman burst through all outward
restraints, and she threw herself upon the bed and clasped the dead body
of her sister to her breast, and broke into a tempest of tears and sobs
and lamentations.
"Oh, Nora! my darling! are you really dead and gone from me forever?
Shall I never hear the sound of your light step coming in, nor meet the
beamings of your soft eyes, nor feel your warm arms around my neck, nor
listen to your coaxing voice, pleading for some little indulgence which
half the time I refused you?
"How could I have refused you, my darling, anything, hard-hearted that I
was! Ah! how little did I think how soon you would be taken from me, and
I should never be able to give you anything more! Oh, Nora, come back to
me, and I will give you everything I have--yes, my eyes, and my life,
and my soul, if they could bring you back and make you happy!
"My beautiful darling, you were the light of my eyes and the pulse of my
heart and the joy of my life! You were all that I had in the world! my
little sister and my daughter and my baby, all in one! How could you die
and leave me all alone in the world, for the love of a man? me who loves
you more than all the men on the earth could love!
"Nora, I shall look up from my loom and see your little wheel standing
still--and where the spinner? I shall sit down to my solitary meals and
see your vacant chair--and where my companion? I shall wake in the dark
night and stretch out my arms to your empty place beside me--and where
my warm loving sister? In the grave! in the cold, dark, still grave!
"Oh, Heaven! Heaven! how can I bear it?--I, all day in the lonely house!
all night in the lonely bed! all my life in the lonely world! the black,
freezing, desolate world! and she in her grave! I cannot bear it! Oh,
no, I cannot bear it! Angels in heaven, you know that I cannot! Speak to
the Lord, and ask him to take me!