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Musings in Maoriland

Mother's Grave

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Mother's Grave.

Up on the hill where beds are made
Narrow and deep with pick and spade;
Up on the hill where death-flowers grow,
Over a grave a child bent low,
  Picking the weeds of a new-formed plot;
Up on the hill on a Sabbath morn,
(Works of mercy that day adorn),
  Guardian spirits around the spot.

Under the sun the city basked,
  The sun that over the valley smiled,
"Why art thou here alone?" I asked—
  "Why art thou here alone, my child?"
Her bosom swelled with sorrow's throbs,
  Which burst the flood-gates of the heart;
I watched the bright drops, born of sobs,
  Out from the wells of her sad eyes start.
"Why art thou here?" again I said,
"Weeping over this lonely bed?"

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And this was the only reply she gave,
"Oh, sir, I am weeding my mother's grave."

I asked no more, but turned away
From girl, and stone, and mound of clay;
I asked no more, for that sentence told
Of lonely hearts, and of strangers cold;
And then I knelt in an old churchyard,
Where one grim elm-tree stood to guard
A daisy quilt and a crumbling stone,
And I was a child, alone, alone;
And the wild wind moaned through the ruins old,
And the clouds were black and the world was cold,
And sadly I heard the weird gusts rave
Through the crumbling walls near my mother's grave.

Up on the hill, where beds are made
Narrow and deep with pick and spade;
Up on the hill, where death-flowers grow,
Over a grave a child bent low,
  Picking the weeds off a new-formed plot;
Up on the hill, on a Sabbath morn,
(Works of mercy that day adorn),
  Guardian spirits around the spot.