The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

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OR TORN LEA.VES FROM LYE HISTORY, 245
began from where that cold, white marble closed above
her clay.
On the lone hill-side, where, high above the ocean wave,
the wild, free sea winds swept, one wretched, heart-wrung
mourner followed the humble shell that held the broken
casket of the good, the brave, and loving Ernest Rossi.
No priest was there to mutter formal prayers. "He needs
them not," his lonely comrade thought':. "For such as he
the heaven of rest was made. His loving lips are pouring
forth the waves of song in happier, brighter climes, or immortality
is all a fiction."
The mariners who brought him to that shore du,g his
quiet grave and laid him in it. The wild winds sang his
funeral requiem. The lone stars kept their silent watch
by night, and fluttering sea-birds hovered near by day.
The very daisies loved to cling around the pure and peaceful
ashes of the good.
The fishermen and timid village maids, who shrank
from mournful churchyards in affright, when evening hours
stole on and moonbeams slept upon the gentle minstrel's
parting dust, came lovingly and sat upon the stone, and
listened through the livelong night to hear the angel music
which full often stole in thrilling cadence far across the
sea. None thought of him with fear, or heard the air
vibrate to viewless minstrel's melting tones when near that
grave, with terror. Sometimes they said they saw, when
moon and stars made glorious pageantry of summer night,
- when all things lovely smiled, and happy thoughts came
in the hallowed radiance of such nights, - two glancing
forms, more splendid than the dreams of ,poet's wildest
vi.sions, float on the waves of balmy summer air, or gleam
like flashing mete,ors through the night. A third was
there, more shadowy, pille, and sad, like the last gleam
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