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(Died July 18, 1881)
DEAD! dead! in sooth his marbled brow is cold, | |
| And prostrate lies that brave, majestic head; | |
| True! his stilled features own death’s arctic mould, | |
| Yet, by Christ’s blood, I know he is not dead! | |
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| Here fades the cast-off vestment that he wore, | 5 |
| The robe of flesh, whence his true self hath fled; | |
| Whate’er be false, one faith holds fast and sure, | |
| Great souls like his abide not with the dead: | |
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| Eyried with God, beyond all mortal pain, | |
| Breathing the effluence of ethereal birth, | 10 |
| Through deeds divine, his spirit walks again, | |
| On rhythmic feet the mournful paths of earth! | |
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| In heaven immortal, yet on earth supreme, | |
| The glamour of his goodness still survives, | |
| Not in vain glimpses of a flattering dream, | 15 |
| But flower and fruit of ransomed human lives. | |
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| His hopes were ocean-wide, and clasped mankind; | |
| No Levite plea his mercy turned apart, | |
| But wounded souls—to whom all else were blind— | |
| He soothed with wine and balsam of the heart. | 20 |
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| With stainless hands he reared his Master’s cross; | |
| His Master’s watchword pealed o’er land and sea; | |
| And still through days of gain, and days of loss, | |
| Proclaimed the golden truce of charity. | |
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| All men were brethren to his larger creed, | 25 |
| But given the thought sincere—the earnest aim; | |
| God’s garden will not spurn the humblest weed | |
| That yearns for purer air and loftier flame. | |
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| This sweet evangel of the unborn years, | |
| Seer-like he spake, as one that viewed his goal, | 30 |
| While the world felt through darkness and through tears, | |
| Mysterious music thrill its raptured soul. | |
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| Dead! nay, not dead! while eagle thoughts aspire, | |
| Clothed in winged deeds across the empyreal height, | |
| And all the expanding space is flushed with fire, | 35 |
| And deep on deep, heaven opens to our sight,— | |
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| He cannot die! yet, o’er his dust we shed | |
| Our rain of human sorrow; on his breast | |
| Cross the pale palms: and pulseless heart and head | |
| Leave to the quiet of his cloistered rest. | 40 |
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| Sleep, knightly scholar! warrior-saint, repose! | |
| Thy life-force folded like an unfurled sail! | |
| Spent is time’s rage—its foam of crested woes— | |
| And thou hast found, at last, the Holy Grail! | |
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