A Girl's Funeral in Milan

There in the strange old gilded hearse
With a mound of paper-flowers on her breast,
Her life being over, for better or worse,
They bore her on to her final rest.

And the women followed her, two by two,
And talked of how young she was to die;
And the cold drops drenched them through and through,
As under the pitiless, frowning sky

On they marched in the drizzling rain
To the little old church in the Milan square,
Where the choir-boys chanted with shrill refrain,
And the toothless Padre muttered his prayer;

Then straight to the waiting grave they went;
And the rain rained on, and the wind was still;
Since, all her treasure of life being spent,
It was time Death had of the girl his will.

And they left her there with the rain and the wind,
Glad, I think, to have come to the end;
For the grave folds close, and the sod is kind,
And thus do the friendless find a friend.