And loftiest aspiration! Tell thy friend,
Beside my grave: “He did the best he could,
With earnest spirit polishing the lens
By which he took the heavens in his ken,
And through the empyrean sought for God;
He caught, or thought he caught, from time to time,
Bright glimpses of the Infinite, on which
He fed in rapturous and quiet joy,
That helped him keep a host of troubles down.
He went his way,—a different path from mine,