A word of victory over death, a word of promise sweet;
And as the great good clasps the less, the sun a myriad rays,
So do a hundred thoughts of joy cling round our Easter days.
And one, which seems at times the best and dearest of them all,
Is this: that all the many dead in ages past recall,
With the friends who died so long ago that memory seeks in vain
To call the vanished faces back, and make them live again;
And those so lately gone from us that still they seem to be
Beside our path, beside our board, in viewless company,—
A light for all our weary hours, a glory by the way,—