For these are the hues of day-dawn that you saw from the world of old,
And the first light over the mountains was shed from their crowns of gold;
And many go by with weeping, for ever, the long night through,
The tears of the sorrowing angels fall over the earth in dew;
Till your eyes grow weary of wonder as you sit in the long cool grass,
And many will bend and kiss you of the wonderful forms that pass;
With your head on the breast of the angel there will steal down over your eyes
The sleep of the long forgetting, and the dream where memory dies,
As the flowers are washed in the night-time, when the dew drops down from above,
You will reck no more of the winter, and hunger, and want of love.
Then at last it will seem like even when you waken, and hand in hand
You will pass with your angels guiding, to the utmost verge of the land;
And I think you will hear far voices growing musical there, and loud,
As you pass, with an unfelt swiftness, from luminous cloud to cloud;
Till the light shall turn to a glory, that seemed but a lone faint star,
That will be the gate of Heaven, where the souls of the children are.