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Poems and Essays

By the late William Caldwell Roscoe. (Edited with a Prefatory Memoir, by his Brother-in-law, Richard Holt Hutton)

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TO A FRIEND IN GRIEF.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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92

TO A FRIEND IN GRIEF.

Full in the gate where earth and heaven meet
I saw the figure of celestial Faith,
With face devout and grave, like one that pray'th.
There, as she sat, to her immortal feet
Came that loud-weeping babe with footsteps fleet,
Mortal Affliction, born of Love and Death,
Naked, and wounded by the cold night-breath.
Then, like a mother, with endearments sweet
She laid him in her lap and dried his tears,
And made him smile with comfort soft as air.
Following his flight, as the sad earth he nears,
I saw thy woful face upturned in prayer:
Out of thy bosom came this weeping boy;
Back to thy bosom take this child of joy!