Monody

To have known him, to have loved him
 After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
 And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal—
 Ease me, a little ease, my song!
By wintry hills his hermit-mound
 The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
 Beneath the fir-trees’ crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
 That hid the shyest grape.