Need I say that I was happy when she nestled there?
that her voice was music to my soul, and her smile the very presence of beauty?
Need I say it was joy when she called me, Mother?
Then I lived for the present; all the sorrow that I had seen around me, was forgotten.
God called that angel to her native heaven, and I wept.

Now was the mystery of the myrtle-covered graves open before my sight.

I had seen the going forth of a little life that was part of my own, I remembered the hard sighs that convulsed that infant breast.

I knew that the grave was meant to hide from us, silence and pallor, desolation and decay.

I was in the world, no longer a garden of flowers, where I sought from under the myrtle for the bright eyes and the velvet cheeks.