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pers from the void Unknown, I feel thy living presence here. The waves which lull thy body's rest, The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod, Unwasted, through each change, attest The fixed economy of God. Thou livest, Follen! not in vain Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne The burthen of Life's cross of pain, And the thorned crown of suffering worn. Oh, while Life's solemn mystery glooms Around us like a dungeon's wall, Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs, Silent the heaven which bends o'er all! While day by day our loved ones glide In spectral silence, hushed and lone, To the cold shadows which divide The living from the dread Unknown; While even on the closing eye, And on the lip which moves in vain, The seals of that stern mystery Their undiscovered trust retain; And only midst the gloom of death, Its mournful doubts and haunting fears, Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith, Smile dimly on us through their tears; '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
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