I know that nothing made is lost; That not a moon hath ever shone, That not a cloud my eyes hath crost, But to my soul hath gone. That all the dead years garnered lie In this gem-casket, my dim soul; And that thy hand may, once, apply The key that opes the whole. But what lies dead in me, yet lives In Thee, whose Parable is--Time, And Worlds, and Forms, and Sound that gives Words and the music-chime. And after my next coming birth, The new child's prayer will rise to Thee: To hear again the sounds of Earth, Its sights again to see. With child's glad eyes to see once more The visioned glories of the gloom, With climbing suns, and starry store, Ceiling my little room. O call again the moons that glide Behind old vapours sailing slow; Lost sights of solemn skies that slide O'er eyelids sunken low. Show me the tides of dawning swell, And lift the world's dim eastern eye, And the dark tears that all night fell With radiance glorify. First I would see, oh, sore bereft! My father's house, my childhood's home; Where the wild snow-storms raved, and left White mounds of frozen foam. Till, going out one dewy morn, A man was turning up the mould; And in our hearts the spring was born, Crept hither through the cold. And with the glad year I would go, The troops of daisies round my feet; Flying the kite, or, in the glow Of arching summer heat, Outstretched in fear upon the bank, Lest gazing up on awful space, I should fall down into the blank From off the round world's face. And let my brothers be with me To play our old games yet again; And all should go as lovingly As now that we are men. If over Earth the shade of Death Passed like a cloud's wide noiseless wing, We'd tell a secret, in low breath: "Mind, 'tis a _dream_ of Spring. "And in this dream, our brother's gone Upstairs; he heard our father call; For one by one we go alone, Till he has gathered all." Father, in joy our knees we bow; This earth is not a place of tombs: We are but in the nursery now; They in the upper rooms. For are we not at home in Thee, And all this world a visioned show; That, knowing what _Abroad_ is, we What _Home_ is, too, may know? And at thy feet I sit, O Lord, As years ago, in moonlight pale, I sat and heard my father's word Reading a lofty tale. So in this vision I would go Still onward through the gliding years, Reaping great Noontide's joyous glow, Still Eve's refreshing tears. One afternoon sit pondering In that old chair, in that old room, Where passing pigeon's sudden wing Flashed lightning through the gloom. There, try once more with effort vain, To mould in one perplexed things; And find the solace yet again Faith in the Father brings. Or on my horse go wandering round, Mid desert moors and mountains high; While storm-clouds, darkly brooding, found In me another sky. For so thy Visible grew mine, Though half its power I could not know; And in me wrought a work divine, Which Thou hadst ordered so;