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 former 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.