My Lyrical Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

The dear ones who are worthiest of our love
Below, are also worthiest above.
Too lofty is his place in glory now,
For hands like ours to reach and wreathe his brow:
A few poor flowers we plant upon his tomb,
Watered with tears to make them breathe and bloom.
The gentle soul that was so long thy ward,
Now hovers over thee, thine Angel-Guard:
And, as thou mourn'st above his dust so dear,
Thy happy Comforter draws smiling near.
Look up, dear friend, our Doves of Earth but rise,
Transfigured into Birds of Paradise.

Apparelled richly in presence of the Gods,
With crown upon his brow, the old Greek stood,
And offered up his soul at Sacrifice.
Even then the tidings came,—“Thy son is dead.”

They saw the sharp words pierce him through and through,
The firm lip quiver, and the face grow white;
They saw the strong man tremble to the knees:
Slowly the big drops gathered in his eyes:
Slowly he took the crown from off his head,
And let it fall to the ground, as one who feels
Heart-broke all over,—for his pride of life
Hath faded; all his strength spilled in the dust.

But, when the Messenger went on to tell
The exulting story—how the valiant youth
Had lost a life to win a country's love;
How bravely he had borne him in the battle;
How well he fought, how gloriously he fell;
The weeping Father put his war-look on,
And rose up with the stature of his soul—
All his life listening at the hungry ear—
Eyes burning with the splendour of quenched tears—
His pillared chin firm-set, his brave mouth clenched
In calm resolve to bear, and on his face
A smile as if of Sword-light!

Then he stooped,
And gently took the crown up from the ground;
Softly replaced it on his brow, and wore
It proudly, as the visible symbol of
That other awful crown which darkened down.

So, when the word came that our friend was dead,
We bowed beneath the burden of our loss,
And could have grovelled straightway, prone in dust.
But looking on the happy death he died,
And thinking of the holy life he lived,
And knowing he was one of those that soon
Attain their starry stature, and are crown'd,
We could not linger in the dust to weep,
But were upborne from earth as if on wings;
A sunbeam in the soul dried up the tears,
In which the sorrow trembled to be gone;
For his dear sake we could afford to smile.

Why should we weep, when 'tis so well with him?
Our loss even cannot measure his great gain!
Why should we weep when death is but a mask
Through which we know the face of Life beyond?
Grief did but bow us at his grave to show
Far more of Heaven in the landscape round!

For such a vestal soul as his,—so pure,
So crystal-clear, so filled with light, we looked
As at some window of the other world,
And almost saw the Angel smiling through—
'Twas but a step from out our muddy street
Of earth, on to the pavement all of pearl.

Why should we weep? We do not bury love;
The dust of earth but claims its kindred dust;
We do not drop our jewels in the grave,
And have no need to seek our treasures there.
We do not bury life, and cannot feel
The grave-grass grow betwixt our warmth and him;
Death emptieth the House, but not the Heart:
That keeps its darlings safe though out of sight.

Let us uplift the eyelids of the Mind,
And see the living Love who dwelt awhile
In that frail body, now a spirit of Light,
All jubilant upon the hills of God.
This gloom we feel, this mourning that we wear,
Is but the Shadow of his lordlier height.

Why should they weep who have another friend
In death; another thread to guide them through
Life's maze; another tie to draw them home;
A firmer foothold in the infinite;

Another kinsman on the spiritual side;
Another grasp to greet them through the Void;
Another face to kindle with its life
The pale impersonality of God?

The dearest souls, you know, must part in sleep,
Though lying hand in hand, or side by side,
And death is but a little longer night.
A little while, and we shall wake to find
The clasp unbroken by the dark, and see
Our lost ones with us face to face, and feel
All years of yearning summed up in a kiss.

Why should we fear the Grave? It is the bed
Where the Kings lay in State with Angels round,
And hallowed it for evermore to us.
Why should we fear the Grave? It is the way
The Conquerors went, and made the very dust
Grow starry with the sparkle of their splendour,
And left the darkness conscious of their presence.
We can look down upon the Grave now they
Have plumbed it, spanned it, one foot on each side.

Through their dear love who have abolished death,
We may shut up our Graveyards of the heart,
That looked so grim of old, and plant anew
This garden of our God to smile with flowers.

Why do we shrink so from Eternity?
We are in Eternity from Birth, not Death!
Eternity is not beyond the stars—
Some far Hereafter—it is Here, and Now!
The Kingdom of Heaven is within, so near
We do not see it save by spirit-sight.

We shut our eyes in prayer, and we are There
In thought, and Thoughts are spirit-things—
Realities upon the other side.
In death we close our eyelids once for all
To pass for ever, and seem far away.
And yet the distance does not lie in death;
No distance, save in dissimilitude!
Death's not the only door of spirit-world,
Nor visibility sole presence-sign:
The Near or Far is in our depth of love
And height of life: We look Without, to learn
Our lost ones are beyond all human reach:
We feel Within, and find them nestling near.

Flow soft, ye tears, adown my Lady's face,
And bathe the broken spirit with your balm,
And melt the cloud about her into drops
That glister with the light of Heaven's own smile.
And thou, God, whisper as the tears do fall,
No cloud would rise to rain but for Thy Sun!
She sorroweth not as those who have no hope,
Nor is her House left wholly desolate.
O Grief, lie lightly on my Lady's brow:
She gave her best of life in love for him!
A crown of glory wears the dear bowed head
That hath grown gray in noble sacrifice.

Ah me, I know the heart must have its way.
I know the ache of utter loneliness;
The severance between those that were so near:
The silence never broken by a sound
We still keep listening for; the spirit's loss
Of its old clinging-place, that makes our life
A dead leaf drifting desolately free:

The many thousand things we had to say;
And on the dear still face that hushing look,
As though it bade us listen and be still;
As though the sweet life-music still went on,
Though too far off for hearing—(as it doth).
Thrice have I wrestled and been thrown by Death,
Thrice have I given my dear ones to the grave;
And yet I know—see it in spite of tears:
Say it, even while the heart breaks in the voice:
These are His ways to draw us nearer Him.
We climb our heavens by pathways of the cloud.

He breaks the image to reveal Himself!
He takes our dearest things to woo us with;
Takes, for a little while, the gift He gave
For ever: but to better still our best.

Feeling for that which fled, our finite love
Is caught up in the clasp o' the Infinite,
Palpably as though God did press the hand
And make the heart well up and flood the eyes
With that proud overflow of fuller Heaven!

O Lady, let mine be the songbird's part,
That singeth after rain, and shakes the drops
Down, with his thrillings from the drooping spray,
And sets it softly springing nigher Heaven
That 'twixt the blown-clouds smiles with gladdest blue,
As with the eye of bliss that is to be.
Your love-ties have but lengthened to release
The shadowed soul that needed far more sun.
So the fair Valisneria down the dark
Beside his lover, yearneth towards the light,

And lives up faster, till he springs afloat,
To sun him on the surface of the stream:
And now he draws up, even by the root,
His Love left pining on the earth below,
Lifting her to his side again, full flower;
And 'tis her Heaven to die and get to him!

What did we ask for him, with all our love,
But just a little breath of fuller life,
To float the labouring lungs? And God hath given
Him Life itself; full, everlasting Life.
What did we pray for? Rest, even for a night,
That he might rise with Sleep's most cooling dews
Refreshed, to feel the morning in his soul?
And God hath given him His Eternal Rest.
We could not offer freedom for one hour
From that dread weight of weariness they bear
Who try for years to shake Death's Shadow off:
And God hath made him free for Evermore.

Before me hangs his Picture on the wall,
Alive still, with the loving, cordial eyes.—
How tenderly their winsome lustre laughed!—
The fine pale face, pathetically sweet,
So thin with suffering that it seemed a soul:
We feared the Angels might be kissing it
Too often, and too wooingly for us:
The hands, so delicate and woman-white,
That day by day were gliding from our grasp,
They used to make my heart ache many a time.

I see another picture now. The form
Ye sowed in weakness hath been raised in power;

A palace of pleasure for a prison of pain.
The beauty of his nature that we felt
Is featured in the shape he weareth now!
The same kind face, but changed and glorified;
From Life's unclouded summit it turns back,
And sweetly smiles at all the sorrows past,
With such a look as taketh away grief:
No longer pale, and there is no more pain.
His face is rosed with Heaven's immortal bloom,
For he hath found the land of Health at last;
The One Physician who can cure all ills:
And he hath eaten of the Tree of Life,
And felt the Eternal Spring in brain and breast
Make lusty life that lightens forth in love.

Indeed, indeed, as the old Poet saith,
He was a very perfect, gentle Knight!
A natural Noble, by the grace of God:
Affection in the dearest human form.
Yet, gentle as he was, how gallantly
He bore his sufferings, kept the worst from sight.
Having the heroic flash of English blood.
How freely would he spend his little hoard
Of saved-up strength with spirit lordly and blithe,
To enrich a welcome and make gladder cheer!

And to the Poor he was all tender heart.
The very last time that he talked with me
His trouble was to know how poor folk lived
Upon so small a pittance, and he sighed
For life, for strength to do more than he might,
And in his kingly eyes great sorrow reigned.

No sighs, no weakness now, in that glad world
Where yearning avails more than working here,

And to desire is to accomplish good:
For Wishes get them Wings of power, and range
Rejoicing through illimitable life;
And we shall find some Castles built in Air
Stand good; are habitable after all!

To me, his life is like the innocent Flower
That springs up for the light and spreads for love;
Breathes fragrantly in gratitude to God,
And in sweet odours passes from our sight.
But there's no jot of all his promise lost:—
Each golden hint shall have fulfilment yet—
All that was heavenliest perfected in heaven.

All the shy modesties of secret soul
That breathed like violets hidden in the dusk;
The folded sweetness, the unfingered bloom;
The unsunned riches of his rarer self;
With all the Manhood, coyly unconfessed;
Are shut up softly to be saved by Him
Who gave us of the Flower, but keeps the fruit.

The best his life could grow on earth is given;
The rest can ripen till ye meet in heaven.

And, dear my Lady, little can we guess
What God hath planned for those He loves so much
And beckons home so early to Himself!
May some full foretaste of His perfect peace
Fall on you, solacing with solemn joy.
Of such as he was, there be few on Earth;
Of such as he is, there are many in Heaven;
And Life is all the sweeter that he lived,
And all he loved more sacred for his sake:

And Death is all the brighter that he died,
And Heaven is all the happier that he's there.

So, one by one the dear old faces fade.
Hands wave their far farewell while beckoning us
Across the river all must pass alone.
We stand at gaze upon their shining track,
Until the two worlds mingle in a mist,
And the two lives are molten into one;
Familiar things grow phantom-like remote;
Things visionary draw familiar-near;
The pictures that we gaze on seem the Real
Looking at us; and we the Shadows that pass.

And yet 'tis sweet to feel—as underfoot,
Our path slopes for the quiet place apart;
Day darkens in the Valley of Death's shade—
Our best half landed in the better life;
The balance leaning to the other side;
The peaceful evening comes that brings all home,
And we are weaning kindly to leave go
Our hold of earth; the Home-sigh of the soul
Is daily deepening; and as the gloom
Gathers, and things are growing all a-dusk,
We know our Stars are smiling overhead,
In their eternal setting high and safe
Where they can look down on our passing night,
Glad in the loftier lustre of a sun
We may not see, with steadfast gaze of love
Unfathomable as Eternity:
Dear memories of Hesper gentleness
That are the Phosphor hopes of coming day,
And death grows radiant with our Shining Ones.

Blessed are they whose treasures are in Heaven!
Their grief's too rich for our poor comforting.
Let us put on the robe of readiness,
The golden trumpet will be sounding soon,
That calls us to the gathering in the Heavens!
Let us press forward to their summit of life
Who have ceased to pant for breath and won their Rest,
And there is no more parting, no more pain!