To be th’ assiduous, gentle, useful wife;
That lost, with wearied mind, and spirit poor,
I drop my efforts, and can act no more;
With growing joy I feel my spirits tend
To that last scene where all my duties end.” 
   Hope, ease, delight, the thoughts of dying gave,
Till Lucy spoke with fondness of the grave;
She smiled with wasted form, but spirit firm,
And said, “She left but little for the worm:” 
As toll’d the bell, “There’s one,” she said, “hath press’d
Awhile before me to the bed of rest:” 
And she beside her with attention spread
The decorations of the maiden dead. 
   While quickly thus the mortal part declin’d,
The happiest visions fill’d the active mind;
A soft, religious melancholy gain’d
Entire possession, and for ever reign’d: 
On Holy Writ her mind reposing dwelt,
She saw the wonders, she the mercies felt;
Till, in a bless’d and glorious reverie,
She seem’d the Saviour as on earth to see,
And, fill’d with love divine, th’ attending friend to be;
Or she who trembling, yet confiding, stole
Near to the garment, touch’d it, and was whole;
When, such the intenseness of the working thought,
On her it seem’d the very deed was wrought;
She the glad patient’s fear and rapture found,
The holy transport, and the healing wound;
This was so fix’d, so grafted in the heart,
That she adopted, nay became the part: 
But one chief scene was present to her sight,
Her Saviour resting in the tomb by night;
Her fever rose, and still her wedded mind
Was to that scene, that hallow’d cave, confin’d —
Where in the shade of death the body laid,
There watch’d the spirit of the wandering maid;
Her looks were fix’d, entranced, illumed, serene,
In the still glory of the midnight scene: 
There at her Saviour’s feet, in visions bless’d,
Th’ enraptured maid a sacred joy possess’d;
In patience waiting for the first-born ray
Of that all-glorious and triumphant day: 
To this idea all her soul she gave,
Her mind reposing by the sacred grave;
Then sleep would seal the eye, the vision close,
And steep the solemn thoughts in brief repose. 
   Then grew the soul serene, and all its powers
Again restored, illumed the dying hours;
But reason dwelt where fancy stray’d before,
And the mind wander’d from its views no more;
Till death approach’d, when every look express’d
A sense of bliss, till every sense had rest. 
   The mother lives, and has enough to buy
The attentive ear and the submissive eye
Of abject natures—­these are daily told,
How triumph’d beauty in the days of old;
How, by her window seated, crowds have cast
Admiring glances, wondering as they pass’d;
How from her carriage as she stepp’d to pray,
Divided ranks would humbly make her way;
And how each voice in the astonish’d throng
Pronounced her peerless as she moved along.