I MOURNED the summer rose that died;

I said: “It will return no more.”

But lo! its beauty glorified

I saw next summer’s sun restore.

New-born, it crowned with radiant grace

The stalk where last year’s blossom came;

I marked its hues, I knew its face;

‘Twas the same rose—yet not the same.

I could not trace amid its bloom,

The atoms of a farmer flower,

Nor tell what waste from nature’s tomb

Had robed it for its perfect hour.

I asked not if its form expressed

The very substance that decayed—

 But there, in every trait confessed,

My lovely favorite stood displayed.

And when I knew the parent tree

Had planned the rose ere spring begun

 To set its prisoned being free,

I felt the old and new were one.

O! not in watched and labeled dust

 Lies beauty’s resurrection form;

Live in God’s mind her likeness must,

 His memory keeps her ashes warm.

There is no pattern lost; where’er

The perished parcel blends with earth,

The cast no changes can impair,

Nor death deface the seal of birth.

Of every face that fades away,

Somehow, in custody Divine,

The mould that shaped the featured clay

 Preserves its image, line for line.

What though this dust, dispersed, complete,

Shall never, grain for grain, be found?

‘Tis but the shoes the pilgrim’s feet

Put off to walk on holy ground—

Wherever, from the grave estranged.

To life awaked, he only knows

New grace hath clothed his form and changed

The faded to the freshened rose.

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