A Funeral

We have received from Mr. Joseph Richa, this magazine's correspondent and agent in the Gold Coast, a poem entitled "A Funeral," which he dedicated to "her who bore his hopes to the grave before her own eyes, and refused to walk in their funeral procession." We select from it the following verses:

I bear my hopes in funeral to a rugged wasteland,
while the blackness of the night never turns to dawn.

Must I, every day, hold the funeral of some death,
walking with it alone, as though in a desert?

A stranger to the world, a stranger to hope—
no sweetness tempts me, no gathered fruit allures.

For men are dreams that show their stains in the forenoon,
while my dream expires while still upon my lap!

It dies just before the morning—and the morning, pouncing,
embitters for me even the road to my grave.

So I carry tablets that tell of my calamity
and grope through the heart of the darkness, knowing not where.

I carry my heart—toward life—and yet I see,
for the shrouding of my hopes, nothing but a rugged wasteland?