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‘T is something to a heart like mine
To think of thee as living yet;
To feel that such a light as thine
Could not in utter darkness set.

Less dreary seems the untried way
Since thou hast left thy footprints there,
And beams of mournful beauty play
Round the sad Angel’s sable hair.

Oh! at this hour when half the sky
Is glorious with its evening light,
And fair broad fields of summer lie
Hung o’er with greenness in my sight;

While through these elm-boughs wet with rain
The sunset’s golden walls are seen,
With clover-bloom and yellow grain
And wood-draped hill and stream between;

I long to know if scenes like this
Are hidden from an angel’s eyes;
If earth’s familiar loveliness
Haunts not thy heaven’s serener skies.

For sweetly here upon thee grew
The lesson which that beauty gave,
The ideal of the pure and true
In earth and sky and gliding wave.

And it may be that all which lends
The soul an upward impulse here,
With a diviner beauty blends,
And greets us in a holier sphere.

Through groves where blighting never fell
The humbler flowers of earth may twine;
And simple draughts-from childhood’s well
Blend with the angel-tasted wine.

But be the prying vision veiled,
And let the seeking lips be dumb,
Where even seraph eyes have failed
Shall mortal blindness seek to come?

We only know that thou hast gone,
And that the same returnless tide
Which bore thee from us still glides on,
And we who mourn thee with it glide.

On all thou lookest we shall look,
And to our gaze erelong shall turn
That page of God’s mysterious book
We so much wish yet dread to learn.

With Him, before whose awful power
Thy spirit bent its trembling knee;
Who, in the silent greeting flower,
And forest leaf, looked out on thee,

We leave thee, with a trust serene,
Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move,
While with thy childlike faith we lean
On Him whose dearest name is Love!

1842.