IN MEMORIAM. STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how ; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, Oh Lord, art more than they. We have but faith: we cannot know; Let knowledge grow from more to more, But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear: But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. Forgive what seemed my sin in me; What seemed my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, Oh Lord, to thee. Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Forgive them where they fail in truth, 1849. I HELD it truth, with him who sings But who shall so forecast the years, And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand through time to catch The far-off interest of tears? Let Love clasp Grief, lest both be drowned, To dance with death, to beat the ground, Than that the victor Hours should scorn II. OLD Yew, which graspest at the stones The seasons bring the flower again, O, not for thee the glow, the bloom, And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood, And grow incorporate into thee. III. O SORROW, cruel fellowship! O Priestess in the vaults of Death! O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip? "The stars," she whispers, "blindly run; "And all the phantom, Nature, stands,— And shall I take a thing so blind, Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind? |