A holy creed
It is, and most delightful unto all
Who feel how deeply human sympathies
Blend with our hopes of heaven, which holds that death
Divideth not, as by a roaring sea,
Departed spirits from this lower sphere.
How could the virtuous even in heaven be blest,
Unless they saw the lovers and the friends,
Whom soon they hope to greet! A placid lake
Between Time floateth and Eternity,
Across whose sleeping waters murmur oft
The voices of the immortal, hither brought
Soft as the thought of music in the soul.
Deep, deep the love we bear unto the dead!
The adoring reverence that we humbly pay
To one who is a spirit, still partakes
Of that affectionate tenderness we own'd
Towards a being, once, perhaps, as frail
And human as ourselves, and in the shape
Celestial, and angelic lineaments,
Shines a fair likeness of the form and face
That won in former days our earthly love.
O Grahame! even I in midnight dreams behold
Thy placid aspect, more serenely fair
Than the sweet moon that calms the autumnal heaven.
Thy voice steals, 'mid the pauses of the wind,
Unto my listening soul more touchingly
Than the pathetic tones of airy harp
That sound at evening like a spirit's song.
Yet, many are there dearer to thy shade,
Yea, dearer far than I; and when their tears
They dry at last (and wisdom bids them weep,
If long and oft, O sure not bitterly)
Then wilt thou stand before their raptured eyes
As beautiful as kneeling saint e'er deem'd
In his bright cell Messiah's vision'd form.
I may not think upon her blissful dreams
Who bears thy name on earth, and in it feels
A Christian glory and a pious pride,
That must illume the widow's lonely path
With never dying sunshine.—To her soul
Soft sound the strains now flowing fast from mine!
And in those tranquil hours when she withdraws
From loftier consolations, may the tears,
(For tears will fall, most idle though they be,)
Now shed by me to her but little known,
Yield comfort to her, as a certain pledge
That many a one, though silent and unseen,
Thinks of her and the children at her knees,
Blest for the father's and the husband's sake.
THE END.
Edinburgh:
Printed by James Ballantyne and Co.