Thine is a grief, the depth of which another May never know; Yet, o'er the waters, O my stricken brother!
To thee I go.
I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding Thy hand in mine; With even the weakness of my soul upholding The strength of thine.
I never knew, like thee, the dear departed; I stood not by When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil-hearted Lay down to die.
And on thy ears my words of weak condoling Must vainly fall The funeral bell which in thy heart is tolling, Sounds over all!
I will not mock thee with the poor world's common And heartless phrase, Nor wrong the memory of a sainted woman With idle praise.
With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where, in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb!
Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth Our Father's will, Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth, Is mercy still.
Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel Hath evil wrought Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel,-- The good die not!
God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly What He hath given; They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly As in His heaven.
And she is with thee; in thy path of trial She walketh yet; Still with the baptism of thy self-denial Her locks are wet.
Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields of harvest Lie white in view She lives and loves thee, and the God thou servest To both is true.
Thrust in thy sickle! England's toilworn peasants Thy call abide; And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy presence, Shall glean beside!
1845.
DANIEL WHEELER
Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of Friends, who had labored in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this country.
O Dearly loved!
And worthy of our love! No more Thy aged form shall rise before The bushed and waiting worshiper, In meek obedience utterance giving To words of truth, so fresh and living, That, even to the inward sense, They bore unquestioned evidence Of an anointed Messenger!
Or, bowing down thy silver hair In reverent awfulness of prayer, The world, its time and sense, shut out The brightness of Faith's holy trance Gathered upon thy countenance, As if each lingering cloud of doubt, The cold, dark shadows resting here In Time's unluminous atmosphere, Were lifted by an angel's hand, And through them on thy spiritual eye Shone down the blessedness on high, The glory of the Better Land!
The oak has fallen!
While, meet for no good work, the vine May yet its worthless branches twine, Who knoweth not that with thee fell A great man in our Israel?
Fallen, while thy loins were girded still, Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet, And in thy hand retaining yet The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free, Across the Neva's cold morass The breezes from the Frozen Sea With winter's arrowy keenness pass; Or where the unwarning tropic gale Smote to the waves thy tattered sail, Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat Against Tahiti's mountains beat; The same mysterious Hand which gave Deliverance upon land and wave, Tempered for thee the blasts which blew Ladaga's frozen surface o'er, And blessed for thee the baleful dew Of evening upon Eimeo's shore, Beneath this sunny heaven of ours, Midst our soft airs and opening flowers Hath given thee a grave!
His will be done, Who seeth not as man, whose way Is not as ours! 'T is well with thee!
Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay Disquieted thy closing day, But, evermore, thy soul could say, "My Father careth still for me!"
Called from thy hearth and home,--from her, The last bud on thy household tree, The last dear one to minister In duty and in love to thee, From all which nature holdeth dear, Feeble with years and worn with pain, To seek our distant land again, Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing The things which should befall thee here, Whether for labor or for death, In childlike trust serenely going To that last trial of thy faith!
Oh, far away, Where never shines our Northern star On that dark waste which Balboa saw From Darien's mountains stretching far, So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there, With forehead to its damp wind bare, He bent his mailed knee in awe; In many an isle whose coral feet The surges of that ocean beat, In thy palm shadows, Oahu, And Honolulu's silver bay, Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue, And taro-plains of Tooboonai, Are gentle hearts, which long shall be Sad as our own at thought of thee, Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed, Whose souls in weariness and need Were strengthened and refreshed by thine.
For blessed by our Father's hand Was thy deep love and tender care, Thy ministry and fervent prayer,-- Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine To Israel in a weary land.
And they who drew By thousands round thee, in the hour Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep, That He who bade the islands keep Silence before Him, might renew Their strength with His unslumbering power, They too shall mourn that thou art gone, That nevermore thy aged lip Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn, Of those who first, rejoicing, heard Through thee the Gospel's glorious word,-- Seals of thy true apostleship.
And, if the brightest diadem, Whose gems of glory purely burn Around the ransomed ones in bliss, Be evermore reserved for them Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn Many to righteousness, May we not think of thee as wearing That star-like crown of light, and bearing, Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band, Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand; And joining with a seraph's tongue In that new song the elders sung, Ascribing to its blessed Giver Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever!
Farewell!
And though the ways of Zion mourn When her strong ones are called away, Who like thyself have calmly borne The heat and burden of the day, Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth His ancient watch around us keepeth; Still, sent from His creating hand, New witnesses for Truth shall stand, New instruments to sound abroad The Gospel of a risen Lord; To gather to the fold once more The desolate and gone astray, The scattered of a cloudy day, And Zion's broken walls restore; And, through the travail and the toil Of true obedience, minister Beauty for ashes, and the oil Of joy for mourning, unto her!
So shall her holy bounds increase With walls of praise and gates of peace So shall the Vine, which martyr tears And blood sustained in other years, With fresher life be clothed upon; And to the world in beauty show Like the rose-plant of Jericho, And glorious as Lebanon!
1847
TO FREDRIKA BREMER.
It is proper to say that these lines are the joint impromptus of my sister and myself. They are inserted here as an expression of our admiration of the gifted stranger whom we have since learned to love as a friend.
Seeress of the misty Norland, Daughter of the Vikings bold, Welcome to the sunny Vineland, Which thy fathers sought of old!
Soft as flow of Siija's waters, When the moon of summer shines, Strong as Winter from his mountains Roaring through the sleeted pines.
Heart and ear, we long have listened To thy saga, rune, and song; As a household joy and presence We have known and loved thee long.
By the mansion's marble mantel, Round the log-walled cabin's hearth, Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies Meet and mingle with our mirth.
And o'er weary spirits keeping Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill, Shine they like thy sun of summer Over midnight vale and hill.
We alone to thee are strangers, Thou our friend and teacher art; Come, and know us as we know thee; Let us meet thee heart to heart!
To our homes and household altars We, in turn, thy steps would lead, As thy loving hand has led us O'er the threshold of the Swede.
1849.
TO AVIS KEENE ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES.
Thanks for thy gift Of ocean flowers, Born where the golden drift Of the slant sunshine falls Down the green, tremulous walls Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers, Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers, God's gardens of the deep His patient angels keep; Gladdening the dim, strange solitude With fairest forms and hues, and thus Forever teaching us The lesson which the many-colored skies, The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies, The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings The tropic sunshine from its golden wings, The brightness of the human countenance, Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance, Forevermore repeat, In varied tones and sweet, That beauty, in and of itself, is good.
O kind and generous friend, o'er whom The sunset hues of Time are cast, Painting, upon the overpast And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow The promise of a fairer morrow, An earnest of the better life to come; The binding of the spirit broken, The warning to the erring spoken, The comfort of the sad, The eye to see, the hand to cull Of common things the beautiful, The absent heart made glad By simple gift or graceful token Of love it needs as daily food, All own one Source, and all are good Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach, Where spent waves glimmer up the beach, And toss their gifts of weed and shell From foamy curve and combing swell, No unbefitting task was thine To weave these flowers so soft and fair In unison with His design Who loveth beauty everywhere; And makes in every zone and clime, In ocean and in upper air, All things beautiful in their time.
For not alone in tones of awe and power He speaks to Inan; The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower His rainbows span; And where the caravan Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there, He gives the weary eye The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours, And on its branches dry Calls out the acacia's flowers; And where the dark shaft pierces down Beneath the mountain roots, Seen by the miner's lamp alone, The star-like crystal shoots; So, where, the winds and waves below, The coral-branched gardens grow, His climbing weeds and mosses show, Like foliage, on each stony bough, Of varied hues more strangely gay Than forest leaves in autumn's day;-- Thus evermore, On sky, and wave, and shore, An all-pervading beauty seems to say God's love and power are one; and they, Who, like the thunder of a sultry day, Smite to restore, And they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift Their perfume on the air, Alike may serve Him, each, with their own gift, Making their lives a prayer!
1850
THE HILL-TOP