Memorials of a Happy Time: The Teacher

This was thy heart where I did fondly trace
The way that God had gone: in little things
And childish growths I found the hidden springs
Where He had put His virtue. Thy short race
In holy calm and evenness hath past.
Oh! how unlike those gay and wayward hearts
That might in Athens rise to bear their parts
In the Greek torch race: and with giddy haste
Wave their bright pine about, and quench its blaze,
Types of their own wild course in after days!
Thy soul's most secret growings I have seen,
Ordered by God so quietly and slow,
That thou thyself, dear friend, dost scarcely know
Or what thou art or what thou mightst have been.