Sweet as the poetry of heaven, Bright as her evening star, Be all thy life in music given, While beauty fills each bar. Lynn, Mass., _December 8, 1866_. _NEVERMORE_ Are the dear days ever coming again, As sweetly they came of yore, Singing the olden and dainty refrain, Oh, ever and nevermore? Ever to gladness and never to tears, Ever the gross world above; Never to toiling and never to fears, Ever to Truth and to Love? Can the forever of happiness be Outside this ever of pain? Will the hereafter from suffering free The weary of body and brain? Weary of sobbing, like some tired child Over the tears it has shed; Weary of sowing the wayside and wild, Watching the husbandman fled; Nevermore reaping the harvest we deem, Evermore gathering in woe-- Say, are the sheaves and the gladness a dream, Or to the patient who sow? Lynn, Mass., _September 3, 1871_. _MEETING OF MY DEPARTED MOTHER AND HUSBAND_ Joy for thee, happy friend! thy bark is past The dangerous sea, and safely moored at last-- Beyond rough foam. Soft gales celestial, in sweet music bore-- Spirit emancipate for this far shore-- Thee to thy home. "You've traveled long, and far from mortal joys, To Soul's diviner sense, that spurns such toys, Brave wrestler, lone. Now see thy ever-self; Life never fled; Man is not mortal, never of the dead: The dark unknown. "When hope soared high, and joy was eagle-plumed, Thy pinions drooped; the flesh was weak, and doomed To pass away. But faith triumphant round thy death-couch shed Majestic forms; and radiant glory sped The dawning day. "Intensely grand and glorious life's sphere,-- Beyond the shadow, infinite appear Life, Love divine,-- Where mortal yearnings come not, sighs are stilled, And home and peace and hearts are found and filled, Thine, ever thine. "Bearest thou no tidings from our loved on earth, The toiler tireless for Truth's new birth All-unbeguiled? Our joy is gathered from her parting sigh: This hour looks on her heart with pitying eye,-- What of my child?" "When, severed by death's dream, I woke to Life, She deemed I died, and could not know the strife At first to fill That waking with a love that steady turns To God; a hope that ever upward yearns, Bowed to His will. "Years had passed o'er thy broken household band, When angels beckoned me to this bright land, With thee to meet. She that has wept o'er thee, kissed my cold brow, Rears the sad marble to our memory now, In lone retreat.