After a Death

The grief that was delayed so long,
O Lord! hath come at last;
Blest be Thy Name for present pain,
And for the weary past!

Yet, Father! I have looked so long
Upon the coming grief,
That what should grieve my heart the most
Seems almost like relief.

Alas! then, did I love the dead
As well as he loved me?
Or have I sought myself alone
Rather than him, or Thee?

To fear is harder than to weep,
To watch than to endure;
The hardest of all griefs to bear
Is a grief that is not sure.

As on a watchtower did I stand,
Like one that looks in fear,
And sees an overwhelming host
O'er hill and dale draw near.

The bitterness each day brought forth
Was more than I could bear,
And hope's uncertainty was worse
Than positive despair.

I grew more unprepared for grief
Which had so long been stayed;
The blow seemed more impossible
The more it was delayed.

Yes! the most sudden of our griefs
Are those which travel slow;
The longer warning that it gives
The deeper is the woe.

To look a sorrow in the face
False magnitude imparts;
All sorrows look immensely large
Unto our little hearts.

But to look long upon a grief,
Which is so long in sight,
Unmans the heart more terribly
Then a sudden death at night.

A swift and unexpected blow,
If hard to bear, is brief;
But oh! it is less sudden far
Than a quiet creeping grief.

Least griefs are more than we can bear,
Each worse than those before;
Our own griefs always greater griefs
Than those our fathers bore.

The griefs we have to bear alone.
The griefs that we can share,
Our single griefs, our crowded griefs
Which are the worst to bear?

Yet all are less than our deserts;
Within our grace they lie;
The sorrows we exaggerate
We cannot sanctify.

Dear Lord! in all our loneliest pains
Thou hast the largest share,
And that which is unbearable
'Tis Thine, not ours, to bear.

How merciful Thine anger is,
How tender it can be,
How wonderful all sorrows are
Which come direct from Thee!

Years fly, O Lord! and every year
More desolate I grow;
My world of friends thins round me fast,
Love after love lies low.

There are fresh gaps around the hearth,
Old places left unfilled,
And young lives quenched before the old,
And the love of old hearts chilled:

Dear voices and dear faces missed,
Sweet households overthrown,
And what is left more sad to see
Than the sight of what has gone.

All this is to be sanctified,
This rupture with the past;
For thus we die before our deaths,
And so die well at last.