TO A FRIEND.
You dread my hand when white and cold,
When death has closed my eyes!
Will mine be then forbidding lips
Because the silence lies
So heavily upon your heart?
Ah, passing sad, ’twere so,
Stay, stay your tears and speak to me,
For I shall surely know,
And at the daybreak I shall come
And touch your face in sleep,
And breathe a thought around your soul,
So tenderly, so deep,
Like unto music it shall be,
Though you no sound shall hear,
Yet in your dreaming you will smile,
And know that I am near.