mother's ear The daughter's sorrows can betray. Mothers of happy human clay Can share at least their children's doom; And when the loved ones pass away, Can track—can join them—in the tomb! The race alone of heavenly birth Are banished from the darksome portals; The Fates have mercy on the earth, And death is only kind to mortals! 30 Oh, plunge me in the night of nights, From heaven's ambrosial halls exiled! Oh, let the goddess lose the rights That shut the mother from the child! Where sits the dark king's joyless bride, Where midst the dead her home is made; Oh that my noiseless steps might glide, Amidst the shades, myself a shade! I see her eyes, that search through tears, In vain the golden light to greet; That yearn for yonder distant spheres, That pine the mother's face to meet! Till some bright moment shall renew The severed hearts' familiar ties; And softened pity steal in dew, From Pluto's slow-relenting eyes! Ah, vain the wish, the sorrows are! Calm in the changeless paths above Rolls on the day-god's golden car—     Fast are the fixed decrees of Jove! Far from the ever-gloomy plain, He turns his blissful looks away. Alas! night never gives again What once it seizes as its prey! Till over Lethe's sullen swell, Aurora's rosy hues shall glow;    And arching through the midmost hell Shine forth the lovely Iris-bow! And is there naught of her; no token—     No pledge from that beloved hand? To tell how love remains unbroken, How far soever be the land? Has love no link, no lightest thread, The mother to the child to bind? Between the living and the dead, Can hope no holy compact find? No! every bond is not yet riven; We are not yet divided wholly; To us the eternal powers have given A symbol language, sweet and holy. When Spring's fair children pass away, When, in the north wind's icy air, The leaf and flower alike decay, And leave the rivelled branches bare, Then from Vertumnus' lavish horn I take life's seeds to strew below—    And bid the gold that germs the corn An offering to the Styx to go! Sad in the earth the seeds I lay—     Laid at thy heart, my child—to be The mournful tokens which convey My sorrow and my love to thee! But, when the hours, in measured dance, The happy smile of spring restore, Rife in the sun-god's golden glance The buried dead revive once more! The germs that perished to thine eyes, Within the cold breast of the earth, Spring up to bloom in gentler skies, The brighter for the second birth! The stem its blossom rears above—     Its roots in night's dark womb repose—    The plant 

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