<i>The Rain on the Grave</i> by P. Luftig (Peter Airey)

'Neath the torrid sun of the Western plain

There lieth a dear one dead;

O! blue were his eyes and fair the curls

That clustered round his head.

There were none to smooth his pillow down,

To close his eyelids dear;

No sound of woman's weeping fell,

There fell no burning tear.

But far, where the little homestead lies,

An old man's hair is gray;

His heart is faint with a deadly fear

For the son so far away.

And the mother wails her absent one,

As Rachel did of old--

'No more I'll see his eyes of blue,

Or dress his locks of gold';

While a winsome maiden bows her head

As the big brown eyes run o'er --

'And though my love lies low in death,

I will love him evermore.'

And the tears that fast and faster fall

The kind heaven lifts on high,

And forms of the drops a cloudlet pale

That floats to the Western sky;

And the tears fall soft from the cloudlet down

Afar on the dear one's head;

That he lie not alone on the Western plain,

Unwept--among the dead.

First published in The Queenslander, 16 December 1893

Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography

See also.

The Rain on the Grave by P. Luftig (Peter Airey)