The cairn

Chapter 56: To a daughter on her marriage.

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About This Book

A compact miscellany of short essays, anecdotes, prayers, poems, and biographical sketches that collects reflections on grief, maternal love, benevolence, virtue, taste, and historical episodes. The pieces alternate personal memories, moral aphorisms, humorous and touching anecdotes, and brief portraits of public figures, often framed as letters, epitaphs, or short narratives. Recurring themes include the effects of sorrow and joy, domestic affection, charity, the vicissitudes of fortune, and the consolations of faith and art. The tone moves between intimate recollection and light moralizing, presenting varied, self-contained vignettes meant to instruct, console, and amuse.

To a daughter on her marriage.

Dear to my heart, as life’s warm stream

Which animates this mortal clay,

For thee I court the waking dream,

And deck with smiles the future day:

And thus beguile the present pain

With hopes that we shall meet again!

Yet will it be as when the past

Twined every joy, and care, and thought,

And o’er our minds one mantle cast

Of kind affections, finely wrought?

Ah no! the groundless hope were vain

For so, we ne’er can meet again!

May he who claims thy tender heart,

Deserve its love, as I have done;

For kind and gentle as thou art,

If so beloved thou’rt fairly won.

Bright may the sacred torch remain,

And cheer thee till we meet again.