A Christian's Funeral

Sum boles of trees divide the purple haze
Of far-off" mountain, and the range subsides
Into an ocean-azure of sweet Vjays,
While over all, mingling with all, abides
A brooding influence of blessed spring
Newly returned, a blue light of warm air ;
And Earth lies, like a child awakening
In some sweet home familiar and fair,
Whereunto it has travelled unaware
In slumber, with a dimly happy smile,
That shall be rapture in a little while.
Against a wall of rustic church I lean
In a small graveyard, where the grass revives
Now from the restful unaspiring green
Wherewithal under winter snow it lives,
And stirs about the marble of two graves.
One large, one small white stone, two grassy waves.
One longer for a woman grey, and one
Small for a child who used to love the sun.

Nigh unto these a silent multitude
In sombre mourning garb hath gathered now,
One human cloud on earth's rejoicing mood.
About an open grave with shadowed brow ;
Many a cottager to see the end
Of one who was a master and a friend ;
Through a long life a just and righteous man,
A tender, human-hearted Puritan ;
With his own hands assuaging every need,
On his own faith inviting each to feed.
All we around him wore a seemly woe ;
But one upon her heart received the blow ;
And as she bent above her mother's tomb,
The while her sire we gathered to the gloom.
Now winter laid a hand upon her hair.
Full many a weeping peasant standing there
Averred that he, beholding her to-day.
Seemed to behold her mother passed away.

All this fair scene men called his property !
Say will it veil its loveliness awhile
From all the world because the Master's eye
No more may answer any sunny smile ?
Though through long years his Spirit brooded here,
Presiding, guarding, moulding all the place ;
Any man now may ruin it with no fear
Of any frown on his imperial face.
When we returned within the house we knew,
How strange to find all things familiar
Unmoved without him, which the while we grew
In earlier years, like rays around a star,
Had ne'er a being sundered from his own !
Now grim-ranged armour, portraits glowering down,
Mellow ancestral figures from the past.
Assumed their proper awfulness at last —
Pathetic shells of withered human life.
Dumb presences, with blurred humanities too rife,
Lavished in laughter and in tears,
With hopes and fears,
On bitter, restless rolling of the years !

Here every great and every trivial thing
Bore impress of his anxious ordering :
Now we may change it all, nor ever dread
Remonstrance from the venerable dead.
Even if the ancestral place he loved so well
Into cold alien hands the heir should sell,
He would not turn unrestful where he lies,
Rapt from our world and our fatuities !
Yea, if the chapel where for many a year
His heart was lavished from this hour should hear
Proclaimed the very creed he most abhorred.
No moan of sorrow from his grave were poured.

Ruins deserted of long-lingering light,
Faces unsouled set in eternal night,
These bannered halls and corridors we knew,
Where innocent, winged the feet of childhood flew!
For gone is he who welcomed us of old.
It seems as though, while musingly he told
Concerning some ancestral painted face,
Pausing before it, sorrowing for the race
Of men because they are transitory gleams
Along the ocean of eternity.
He unaware, as in confusing dreams,
Paled, looking awful ; left us bewilderingly,
To re-emerge himself among the ghosts
Up yonder, who with silent following eyes
Brood ever in mysterious dim posts ;
And since he joined their solemn, leaguering hosts,
We lie down wakeful, waiting a surprise ;
Life sounds all hollow, mined with mysteries,
Ready to crumble baseless into smoke,
To vanish in the moment of a look.

Is all then over ? is he only dust ?
Can it be, in the face of such a trust ?
No shadow of misgiving ever swept
The wondrous light of faith wherein he slept.
He knew, yea, toiled that all around should know,
The life of saints hath birth but when they go.
And in this faith dark, long-delaying death
But now he greeted, giving away his breath.
Ah ! did he waken even when he died
Upon the bosom of the Crucified ?
When hymns one sang him waned uponhisear,
Did angel hallelujahs peal more clear ?
Ah ! did he pass from trust that seemeth dull,
Beside the consummation beautiful ?
Or did the vision fade for ever away
When his poor pale lips might no longer pray ?
When sick at heart I kneeling with the crowd
Heard him pour forth his fervent soul aloud
Nightly to God, as though he saw the Lord,
Yea, touched and held his very written word.
Ah was he sane, who saw the glory gleam.
Or I, foreboding all was but a dream ?
Foreboding there is none to hear us call,
Or lift us from the inevitable fall ;
That all this ardent longing he will lose
Then when the mortal weakness shall confuse.
Dissolving all the human? — we shall perish,
Though, kneeling in our dust, our children cherish
Our old illusion ! — 'tis a bleak denial,
Ruthlessly rolling in their hour of trial
The very solid earth from underneath
Weak feet that waver; from a labouring breath
Stealing the air that hardly saves from death !
And can ye doubt, believers, we would share
Ennobling hopes that save you from despair ?
Alas ! alas ! for he had seemed estranged.
Since old horizons of my spirit changed
In later years — no marvel this should be !
Only a sorrow it was to him and me.
Now I remembered little save the days
Of his dear coming to my school with rays
Of never-failing, kindly happiness.
Beaming from all his countenance to bless
Me in the breezy, hill-built school, so dear
To many a boyhood, yet to mine a fear,
A very loathing— I may scarce recall
One face endeared to me among them all !
Saving for Byron's grave, one boy beloved,
And some sweet lanes where arm in arm we roved,
I would those years might fade from memory,
With but one space among them shining high!
Cheery repasts in that small garden trim
Of the old tavern, whose adornment grim
Was many a wooden dragon blue and red,
Where we sat feasting, trellised overhead.
Nor these, nor golden gift at parting slid
Into my palm, in anywise lay hid
From me when I stood by the grave to-day,
With all the variance vanished far away.

Poor human differences ! at the grave
Our universal schemes that looked so brave
Hang the head silent, neVulous, and pale.
Beside the solemn truth, whose visions fail,
His, or my own? the impalpable Beyond —
Doth it for him lie curled within the bond
Of his imagining any longer? nay !
Nor less my blind denial faints away
Here by him, grown more awful than bef :)re.
Surely he doth abide for evermore !

Poor human differences ! lapped in light
Some calm-lived angel may behold the flight,
The momentary flight of human things
Athwart their gleam with multitudinous wings —
To wise, grave eyes a melancholy scene !
No buoyant wings serene,
Jubilant they for one brief hour may shine.
Warmly irradiate from the face Divine !
Nay, but a clash of dissonant loud strife,
Where each his glimpse of the universal life
Shrieks forth, infuriate with a presumptuous brother.
Who dares proclaim to the world his own or any other.

The while we laid him under earth I heard,
Warbling within a laurel near, a bird
Who never ceased to warble clear and sweet.
For all the ghastly noise of shufiling feet
And griding rope, with tumult ill-suppressed.
Or silent tears relieving hearts oppressed ;
Pealing methought with confirmation rife,
When " I am the resurrection and the life !"
A solemn human voice proclaimed aloud :
While vernal airs, with all relenting fountains
Among the eternal brotherhood of mountains.
And youngling flowers, and the everlasting sea
Made sweet accord in deep tranquillity.

His faith endures upon foundations wide
And firm as the universe, howe'er have ailed
The superstructure : evermore abide
Those w-ell-beloved lives who may have failed
Our earthly vision in the Life of life ;
In some abysmal Peace profoundly veiled.
Where they await us, where we shall be one;
As may be in the ineffable alone.
And never in the glory of the mortal strife.
However hearts may yearn for union.
I foolish, while he prayed, have felt the fear
There may be none in all the worlds to hear :
Surely the Life of life, whene'er we cry,
Fills our low springs with personality :
Surely, however lurid lower the gloom.
Surely, howe'er bewildering the doom,
All stands established from eternity.
Adorable, however it may be !