I am lucky enough to have in my personal library a book entitled ‘The Mourner’s Friend or Sighs of Sympathy For Those Who Sorrow’. It is a collection of prose and verse compiled to give comfort to the grieving. Edited by J.B. Syme, published in 1852 by S.A. Howland in Worcester, Mass, USA; its contents are by American and European authors and some surprising famous names. My copy of the book has some water damage, ageing paper, and precarious binding, so before it deteriorates my project to preserve the words of the authors will find its way here on the MOLAM blog.
The First Violet.
SPRING has come, dear mother!
I’ve a violet found,
Growing in its beauty
From the cold, dark ground.
You are sad, dear mother,
Tears are in your eye ;
You’re not glad to see it :
Mother, tell me why ?
I remember, –Last year,
Where our Willie lies,
Grew the earliest violet,
Blue as were his eyes.
Then you told me, mother,
That the flowers would fade,
And their withered blossoms
On the earth be laid.
But you said, as springtime
Would their buds restore,
Willie would in heaven
Be forevermore.
Weep no more, dear mother !
Violets are in bloom ;
And your darling Willie
Lives beyond the tomb.
