When the good bishop, in the course of his address, alluded to Daubeny’s death, there was throughout the chapel instantly that silence that can be felt—that deep, unbroken hush of expectation and emotion which always produces so indescribable an effect.
“There was one,” he said, “who should have been confirmed to-day, who is not here. He has passed away from us; he will never be present at an earthly confirmation; he is ‘confirmed in heaven—confirmed by God.’ I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that for that confirmation he was indeed prepared, and that he looked forward to it with some of his latest thoughts. I hear that he was pre-eminent among you for the piety, the purity, the amiability of his life and character, and his very death was caused by the intense earnestness of his desire to use aright the talents which God had entrusted to him. O! such a death of one so young yet so fit to die is far happier than the longest and most prosperous of sinful lives. Be sobered but not saddened by it. It is a proof of God’s merciful and tender love that this one of your schoolfellows was taken in the clear and quiet dawn of a noble and holy life, and not some other in the scarlet blossom of precocious and deadly sin. Be not saddened therefore at the loss, but sobered by the warning. The fair, sweet, purple flower of youth falls and fades, my young brethren, under the sweeping scythe of death, no less surely than the withered grass of age. O! be ready—be ready with the girded loins and the lighted lamp—to obey the summons of your God. Who knows for which of us next, or how soon, the bell of death may toll? Be ye therefore ready, for you know not at what day or at what hour the voice may call to you!”
The loss of a well-known companion whom all respected and many loved—the crowding memories of school-life—the still small voice of every conscience, gave strange meaning and force to the bishop’s simple words. As they listened, many wept in silence, while down the cheeks of Walter, of Power, and of Henderson, the tears fell like summer rain.
In the evening Walter was seated thoughtfully by the fire in Power’s study, while Power was writing at the table, stopping occasionally to wipe his glistening eyes.
“He was my earliest friend here,” he said to Walter, almost apologetically, as he hastily brushed off the drop which had fallen and blurred the paper before him. “But I know it is selfish to be sorry,” he added, as he pushed the paper towards Walter.
“May I read this, Power?” asked Walter.
“Yes, if you like,” and he drew his chair by his, while Walter read in Power’s small clear handwriting—
A Farewell.
Never more!
Like a dream when one awaketh
Vanishing away;
Like a billow when it breaketh
Scattered into spray;
Like a meteor’s paling ray,
Such is man, do all he can;—
Nothing that is fair can stay.
Sorrow staineth, man complaineth.
Sin remaineth ever more;
Like a wake upon the shore
Soundeth ever from the chorus
Of the spirits gone before us,
“Ye shall meet us, ye shall greet us
In the sweet homes of earth, in the places of our birth,
Never more again, never more!”
So they sing, and sweetly dying
Faints the message of their voices,
Dying like the distant murmur, when a mighty host rejoices,
But the echoes are replying with a melancholy sighing
Never more again! never more!
Far-away
Far far-away are the homes wherein they dwell,
We have lost them, and it cost them
Many a tear, and many a fear
When God forbade their stay;
But their sorrow, on the morrow
Ceased in the dawning of a lighter, brighter day;
And our bliss shall be certain, when death’s awful curtain.
Drawn from the darkness of mortal life away,
To happy souls revealeth what it darkly now concealeth,
Yielding to the glory of heaven’s eternal ray.
Far far-away are the homes wherein they dwell,
But we know that they are blest, and ever more at rest,
And we utter from our hearts, “It is well.”
“May I keep them, Power?” he asked, looking up.
“Do, Walter, as a remembrance of to-day.”