And most of all when thou dost plod,
Alone, upon these wintry days,
Along the old familiar ways
Wherein his little feet have trod.
And thou dost treasure up his words,
The fragments of his earnest talk,
On some remembered morning walk,
When, at the song of earliest birds,
He'd ask of thee, with charméd look,
And smile upon his features spread,
Whose careful hand the birds had fed,
And filled the ever-running brook?
Or viewing, from the distant glade,
The dim horizon round his home,
With simplest speech and air would come
And ask why were the mountains made?
Be strong, my friend, these days of doom
Are but the threads of darkest hue,
That daily enter to renew
The warp of the Eternal Loom.
And when to us it shall be given
In joy to see the other side
These threads the brightest shall abide
In the fair tapestries of Heaven!