Amelia Ball Coppuck Welby (03 Feb 1819 – 03 May 1852 | St Michael’s MD – Louisville KY) poet.

I weep not as I wept when first they laid thee low. I weep not though thou’rt laid in such a lone

dark place. O why should hearts muse on the past, and weep o’er a dream? No guilty tears had

they to weep, no sins to be forgiven; they closed their leaves and went to sleep ‘neath the blue

eyes of heaven. Years have passed, and yet, it only seems the other day since round her dying

bed we met, with breaking hearts, to weep and pray. Thou wilt pour thy weepings long and

wild, in utter loneliness; and memory will whisper ‘she is gone’ and thou wilt wake and weep.

It seemed a sin to weep, above the holy dead, the sanctified. Why shouldst thou keep sadness

within its secret cells? Let not thine eye one tear-drop weep, unless that tear of rapture tells.

The thirsty flowers are drinking every tear the bright stars weep, in the silvery light of even.

E’en Mirth turns aside and weeps, like a mourner reft of every hope above the couch of death.

Welby, Amelia Ball Coppuck. Poems. New York: George Welby, 1849. https://archive.org/details/poems00welb/page/7/mode/1up