“Then we three, Daddy, Ran after, crying, ‘Take us to the sea! Wait for us, Mammy, we are coming too! Here’s Alice, Willie can’t keep up with you! Mammy, stop—just for a minute or two!’ But Alice said, ‘Maybe She’s making us a boat Out of the seal-skin cleverly, And by-and-by she’ll float It on the water from the sands For us.’ Then Willie clapt his hands And shouted, ‘Run on, Mammy, to the sea, And we are coming, Willie understands.’ “At last we came to where the hill Slopes straight down to the beach, And there we stood all breathless, still, Fast clinging each to each. We saw her sitting upon a stone, Putting the little seal-skin on. Oh! Mammy! Mammy! She never said good-bye, Daddy, She didn’t kiss us three; She just put the little seal-skin on, And slipped into the sea! Oh! Mammy’s gone, Daddy; Mammy’s gone! She slipp’d into the sea!” A SURPRISE. “SHE is dead!” they said to him. “Come away; Kiss her! and leave her!—thy love is clay!” They smoothed her tresses of dark brown hair; On her forehead of stone they laid it fair: Over her eyes, which gazed too much, They drew the lids with a gentle touch; With a tender touch they closed up well The sweet thin lips that had secrets to tell; About her brows, and her dear, pale face They tied her veil and her marriage-lace; And drew on her white feet her white silk shoes;— Which were the whiter no eye could choose! And over her bosom they crossed her hands; “Come away,” they said,—“God understands!” And then there was Silence;—and nothing there But the Silence—and scents of eglantere, And jasmine, and roses, and rosemary; For they said, “As a lady should lie, lies she!” And they held their breath as they left the room, With a shudder to glance at its stillness and gloom. But he—who loved her too well to dread The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead,— He lit his lamp, and took the key, And turn’d it!—Alone again—he and she! He and she; but she would not speak, Though he kiss’d, in the old place, the quiet cheek; He and she; yet she would not smile, Though he call’d her the name that was fondest erewhile. He and she; and she did not move To any one passionate whisper of love. Then he said, “Cold lips! and breast without breath! Is there no voice?—no language of death “Dumb to the ear and still to the sense, But to heart and to soul distinct,—intense? “See, now,—I listen with soul, not ear— What was the secret of dying, Dear? “Was it the infinite wonder of all, That you ever could let life’s flower fall? “Or was it a greater marvel to feel The perfect calm o’er the agony steal? “Was the miracle greatest to find how deep, Beyond all dreams, sank downward that sleep?