Patrick Edward Quinn

A Girl's Grave

"Aged 17, OF A BROKEN HEART, January 1st, 1841."

What story is here of broken love,
 What idyllic sad romance,
What arrow fretted the silken dove
 That met with such grim mischance?

I picture you, sleeper of long ago,
 When you trifled and danced and smiled,
All golden laughter and beauty's glow
 In a girl life sweet and wild.

Hair with the red gold's luring tinge,
 Fine as the finest silk,
Violet eyes with a golden fringe
 And cheeks of roses and milk.

Something of this you must have been,
 Something gentle and sweet,
To have broken your heart at seventeen
 And died in such sad defeat.

Hardly one of your kinsfolk live,
 It was all so long ago,
The tale of the cruel love to give
 That laid you here so low.

Loving, trusting, and foully paid —
 The story is easily guessed,
A blotted sun and skies that fade
 And this grass-grown grave the rest.

Whatever the cynic may sourly say,
 With a dash of truth, I ween,
Of the girls of the period, in your day
 They had hearts at seventeen.

Dead of a fashion out of date,
 Such folly has passed away
Like the hoop and patch and modish gait
 That went out with an older day.

The stone is battered and all awry,
 The words can be scarcely read,
The rank reeds clustering thick and high
 Over your buried head.

I pluck one straight as a Paynim's lance
 To keep your memory green,
For the lordly sake of old Romance
 And your own, sad seventeen.