Senseless or passionless to be. A sense of awe which makes me bow To the full use of all its powers, By patient thought and studious hours; Which God himself in thee hath wrought Through years Through study deep and constant prayer, 'Tis true, elsewhere I may have found In whom thy wit and wisdom shone So chasten'd as they are in thee Thy reason calm, thy faith intense, The love that gladdens home and hearth- In voice and look, in mind and heart, And I,-should not this soul of mine Feel as it doth rebuked by thine? This soul, which howsoe'er endued With capabilities of good, With powers of thought, and feeling high, And some bright gleams of phantasy, Did, in the morn of life's brief day, Waste half its brightest years on earth Unpurified from moral ill, Unfurnish'd with the needful store Of earthly or of heavenly lore, Its headstrong passions unsubdued, Each talent unimproved, or given To things on earth, not things in heaven? Thou couldst not choose but love me less, And wilt thou love me less? Ah me, That I should thus conceive of thee! That such a thought should e'er have birth As that of losing, here on earth, Thy friendship, the best boon but one I yet retain beneath the sun! No, lady, I can ne'er believe But that, howe'er thy soul may grieve Wilt yield me, of thine own sweet will, Forgive me, then, that I so oft Provoking me by gentlest force Think of me as of one whose seat As one who fain would learn of thee, Yea, like a meek and docile child, As one whom God to thee hath given, TO MARGARET IN HEAVEN. I. I LOVED thee not, I knew thee not, I never heard thy name, Till they told me that thy spirit pure had left its mortal frame: Thy voice, thy smile, thy pleasant ways can never be to me The treasures which they are to some of mournful memory: When I gaze into the throng'd abyss of youth's departed years, Amidst the forms that meet me there no trace of thee appears; And if I strive to picture thee to Fancy's inward eye, I see indeed a shadowy dream of beauty flitting by; A thoughtful brow, a look lit up by faith and love divine, But not the true, the mortal brow, the look that once was thine. II. And shalt thou then depart from earth, and take thy shining place Among the brightest daughters of our lost and ransom'd race, Without one passing thought from me, one feeling of regret Unfelt for other christian saints whose eyes and mine ne'er met? Shall I hear of all thy patient pangs, thy meekly yielded breath, Yet think of thee as merely one who died a christian death? Undistinguish'd in my mental eye from all the sainted dead, Whose souls the spirit cleansed from sin, for whom the Saviour bled? And, if we meet hereafter, in the mansions of the blest, Shall I then by no assured mark discern thee from the rest? III. Not so; we two are strangers, we were never friends on earth; |