AH! who call tell how strong the tie
Which subtly binds us, heart to heart,
Till the dark master, Death, comes nigh,
To wrench our kindred lives apart?
Then, pondering on the sombre bed,
Where one we cherished dumbly lies,
With pulseless hands, low-smitten head,
And the wail droop of curtained eyes,
The torpor of the death-sleep cold,
The mystic quiet's awful spell,
Whose fathomless silence seems to hold
Such pathos of supreme farewell,
Our clouded spirits throb and reel,
As if some viewless power in air
Had driven a keen ethereal steel
Through quivering heart-depths of despair!
Paled is the dream of heavenly grace,
The jasper sea, the unwaning calms;
We can but mark that breathless face,
Those sightless orbs and folded palms!
A moment since, she softly spake,
Her soul looked forth still hale and clear;
Now, who her wondrous sleep can break?
And she! where hath she vanished,--where?
Ah, Christ! yon shape of ice-locked clay,
Yon fading image, frail and thin,
Touched, as we gaze, by swift decay,
Shrivelled without, and wan within,
What is it but an empty husk,
O'erwhich (at Death's mysterious kiss)
Freed Psyche soars from doubt and dusk
Beyond earth's crumbling chrysalis?
Ay! "dust to dust"--the soil she trod
Claims soon her outworn fleshly dress;
But her true life puts forth, with God,
Fresh blooms of everlastingness!
