Gazing on her peaceful face with its eyes closed on us forever, our cry was her “Cry of the Human.”

  “We tremble by the harmless bed
  Of one loved and departed;
  Our tears drop on the lips that said
  Last night, ‘Be stronger-hearted!’
  O God! to clasp those fingers close,
  And yet to feel so lonely! 
  To see a light upon such brows,
  Which is the daylight only! 
  Be pitiful, O God!”

On the evening of July 1st, the lovely English burying-ground without the walls of Florence opened its gates to receive one more occupant.  A band of English, Americans, and Italians, sorrowing men and women, whose faces as well as dress were in mourning, gathered around the bier containing all that was mortal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Who of those present will forget the solemn scene, made doubly impressive by the grief of the husband and son?  “The sting of death is sin,” said the clergyman.  Sinless in life, her death, then, was without sting; and turning our thoughts inwardly, we murmured her prayers for the dead, and wished that they might have been her burial-service.  We heard her poet-voice saying,—­

  “And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
  That this low breath is gone from me,
  And round my bier ye come to weep,
  Let one most loving of you all
  Say, ’Not a tear must o’er her fall,—­
  He giveth His beloved sleep.’”

But the tears would fall, as they bore her up the hill, and lowered “His beloved” into her resting-place, the grave.  The sun itself was sinking to rest behind the western hills, and sent a farewell smile of love into the east, that it might glance on the lowering bier.  The distant mountains hid their faces in a misty veil, and the tall cypress-trees of the cemetery swayed and sighed as Nature’s special mourners for her favored child; and there they are to stand keeping watch over her.

“Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, Toll slowly! And I said in under-breath, All our life is mixed with death, And who knoweth which is best?

* * * * *

“Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, Toll slowly! And I ‘paused’ to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness,—­ Round our restlessness, His rest.”

Dust to dust,—­and the earth fell with a dull echo on the coffin.  We gathered round to take one look, and saw a double grave, too large for her;—­may it wait long and patiently for him!

And now a mound of earth marks the spot where sleeps Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  A white wreath to mark her woman’s purity lies on her head; the laurel wreath of the poet lies at her feet; and friendly hands scatter white flowers over the grave of a week as symbols of the dead.

We feel as she wrote,—­

  “God keeps a niche
  In heaven to hold our idols; and albeit
  He brake them to our faces, and denied
  That our close kisses should impair their white,
  I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
  The dust swept from their beauty, glorified,
  New Memnons singing in the great God-light.”