If that high world, which lies beyond Our own, surviving Love endears; If there the cherish'd heart be fond, The eye the same, except in tears-- How welcome those untrodden spheres! How sweet this very hour to die! To soar from earth and find all fears Lost in thy light--Eternity! II. It must be so: 'tis not for self That we so tremble on the brink; And striving to o'erleap the gulf, Yet cling to Being's severing link. Oh! in that future let us think To hold each heart the heart that shares; With them the immortal waters drink, And soul in soul grow deathless theirs! * * * * * WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY. I. When coldness wraps this suffering clay, Ah! whither strays the immortal mind? It can not die, it can not stay, But leaves its darken'd dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace By steps each planet's heavenly way? Or fill at once the realms of space, A thing of eyes, that all survey? II. Eternal, boundless, undecay'd, A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all in earth or skies display'd, Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that memory holds So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the soul beholds, And all, that was, at once appears III. Before Creation peopled earth, Its eyes shall roll through chaos back; And where the furthest heaven had birth, The spirit trace its rising track. And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, While sun is quench'd or system breaks, Fix'd in his own eternity. IV. Above our Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years as moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly, A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die. There is no passage in Plato, or in St. Augustin, or in Pascal, which can equal the sublimity of these stanzas.