ORIGINAL POETRY.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 279, 21 March 1879, Page 2

ORIGINAL POETRY.

ASLEEP IN DEATH. Oh, love, how beautiful in death art thou! I kneel before thee and all earthly thought Flies from my mind ; before my God I bow, Seeking his presence I so seldom sought; As Moses when God's burning bush he found, I feel that this dark room is holy ground. Thou wast not mine in life, for thus God willed, Perhaps that would have been too great a bli s, My soul might have been with my love so filled That this earth be to me my Paradise, And I had sunk all thought of Heaven in thee, Mine for this life, lost for eternity. But now I feel that thou, my angel bride, Wilt ever draw me upwards to the light Where thou hast gone, until I reach thy side, When the dark path is trod and fought the fight; When all the weary waste of this life'e days Seems but as nothing to our backward gaze. Beauteous in death, I look upon thy face, Whose holy calm steals upward to my • soul, Fills it so full that there is left no place . As yet for sorrow, that nought shall console, When »nee all that is left of thee is laid Beneath the yew-tree in the north wall's shade. My own - and, yet, how can I say my own, When I know nothing of thy soul's last flight? I, a poor weakling that must walk alone, With down-sunk head, an angel thou of light. Oh! in my darkest day be thou me near; In those dread hours when Hope is lost in Fear. At last, " Farewell!" Thy aweet cold lips I kiss With mine, so dry, they, feverish, burn like fire, And. with a prayer at heart, I pledge thee this, That all my thoughts will now to God aspire, And thee.T bind that thou wilt me await; To pay me back my kiss at Heaven's gate.; X.T.P. '