And while I read, I blessed aloud thy name,
And prayed that Heaven’s best gifts might mingle with its fame!
And now, though stranger to thy form and face,
Yet since familiar with thy spirit’s tone;
Pardon this humble pen, which fain would trace
Some thought, to cheer a heart bereaved and lone,
Some sympathetic token, from a soul
Which bleeds to know that thine is bowed ’neath grief’s control.
The human heart, it hath been aptly said,
Is like that tree, which must a wound receive,