Lydia Huntley Sigourney: Verses about Summer

Died at Hartford, July, 1861.


Faithful and true in duty's sacred sphere,
How like the summer-lightning hath she fled!
One moment bending o'er the letter'd page,--
The next reposing with the silent dead.

No more by shaded lamp, or garden fair;--
Yet hath she left a living transcript here,
Yon helpless orphans will remember her,
And the young invalid she skilled to cheer;

And he who trusted in her from his birth,
As to a Mother's love,--and friends who saw
Her goodness seeking no applause from earth,
But ever steadfast to its heavenly law:

For she, like her of old, with listening ear
Sate at the Saviour's feet and won His plaudit dear.

Died at Hartford, August, 1859.


I saw her overlaid with many flowers,
Such as the gorgeous summer drapes in snow,
Stainless and fragrant as her memory.

Blent with their perfume came the pictur'd thought
Of her calm presence,--of her firm resolve
To bear each duty onward to its end,--
And of her power to make a home so fair,
That those who shared its sanctities deplore
The pattern lost forever.

Many a friend,
And none who won that title laid it down,
Muse on the tablet that she left behind,
Muse,--and give thanks to God for what she was,
And what she is;--for every pain hath fled
That with a barb'd and subtle weapon stood
Between the pilgrim and the promised Land.
But the deep anguish of the filial tear
We speak not of,--save with the sympathy
That wakes our own.
And so, we bid farewell.

* * * * *

Life's sun at setting, may shed brighter rays
Than when it rose, and threescore years and ten
May wear a beauty that youth fails to reach:
The beauty of a fitness for the skies,--
Such nearness to the angels, that their song
'Peace and good will,' like key-tone rules the soul,
And the pure reflex of their smile illumes
The meekly lifted brow.
She taught us this,--
And then went home.

When was the redman's summer?
When the rose
Hung its first banner out? When the gray rock,
Or the brown heath, the radiant kalmia clothed?
Or when the loiterer by the reedy brooks
Started to see the proud lobelia glow
Like living flame? When through the forest gleamed
The rhododendron? Or the fragrant breath
Of the magnolia swept deliciously
Over the half-laden nerve?
No. When the groves
In fleeting colours wrote their own decay,
And leaves fell eddying on the sharpen'd blast
That sang their dirge; when o'er their rustling bed
The red deer sprang, or fled the shrill-voiced quail,
Heavy of wing and fearful; when, with heart
Foreboding or depress'd, the white man mark'd
The signs of coming winter: then began
The Indian's joyous season. Then the haze,
Soft and illusive as a fairy dream,
Lapp'd all the landscape in its silvery fold.
The quiet rivers, that were wont to hide
'Neath shelving banks, beheld their course betray'd
By the white mist that o'er their foreheads crept,
While wrapp'd in morning dreams, the sea and sky
Slept 'neath one curtain, as if both were merged
In the same element. Slowly the sun,
And all reluctantly, the spell dissolved,
And then it took upon its parting wing
A rainbow glory.
Gorgeous was the time
Yet brief as gorgeous. Beautiful to thee,
Our brother hunter, but to us replete
With musing thoughts in melancholy train.
Our joys, alas! too oft were woe to thee.
Yet ah! poor Indian! whom we fain would drive
Both from our hearts, and from thy father's lands,
The perfect year doth bear thee on its crown,
And when we would forget, repeat thy name