Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MARY, by EDWARD NOYES POMEROY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MARY, by                    
First Line: The house is changed where mary lived
Last Line: But dwells with us to-day.
Subject(s): Absence; Cemeteries; Death; Graves; Heaven; Mortality; Separation; Isolation; Graveyards; Dead, The; Tombs; Tombstones; Paradise


"A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye,
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.'
—Wordsworth.

The house is changed where Mary lived.
And, passing to and fro,
I marveled that so many grieved
That she from earth must go.

A quiet little maid was she,
And very sweet and shy;
I knew not what she was to me
Until she came to die.

A single decade was she here,
And then she slipped away;
She vanished from the waning year
And from the broadening day.

Her coming brought a happy face
That recent sorrow stilled;
Her going made a vacant place
That never can be filled.

Beyond the filmy, flying drift,
Beyond the stars she fled;
And when my gaze aloft I lift
I do not count her dead.

Her grave is where the sunshine spills
Its wealth o'er nature's charms;
Around it are the sheltering hills,
Beneath, the quiet farms.

Does Mary ever think of earth?
Does she come back again
To "mix her fancies" with our mirth,
And with our grief as then?

Does she resume the vacant place
And fill the empty seat?
Is there a glory in her face
The sun cannot repeat?

We cannot tell what—more or less—
To angel life is given;
We do not know and cannot guess
The ministries of Heaven.

When death anoints our closing eyes
Perchance their vision is
That only fancied barriers rise
Betwixt that life and this.

That parting is a name—no more—
Whatever mortals say;
That Mary has not gone before,
But dwells with us to-day.





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