True is it that Death's face seems stern and cold, When he is sent to summon those we love, 20 But all God's angels come to us disguised; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after other lift their frowning masks, And we behold the seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God. With every anguish of our earthly part The spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant When Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent 30 To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. He flings not ope the ivory gate of Rest,-- Only the fallen spirit knocks at that,-- But to benigner regions beckons us, To destinies of more rewarded toil. In the hushed chamber, sitting by the dead, It grates on us to hear the flood of life Whirl rustling onward, senseless of our loss. The bee hums on; around the blossomed vine Whirs the light humming-bird; the cricket chirps; 40 The locust's shrill alarum stings the ear; Hard by, the cock shouts lustily; from farm to farm, His cheery brothers, telling of the sun, Answer, till far away the joyance dies: We never knew before how God had filled The summer air with happy living sounds; All round us seems an overplus of life, And yet the one dear heart lies cold and still. It is most strange, when the great miracle Hath for our sakes been done, when we have had 50 Our inwardest experience of God, When with his presence still the room expands, And is awed after him, that naught is changed, That Nature's face looks unacknowledging, And the mad world still dances heedless on After its butterflies, and gives no sign. 'Tis hard at first to see it all aright: In vain Faith blows her trump to summon back Her scattered troop: yet, through the clouded glass Of our own bitter tears, we learn to look 60 Undazzled on the kindness of God's face; Earth is too dark, and Heaven alone shines through. It is no little thing, when a fresh soul And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured scope For good, not gravitating earthward yet, But circling in diviner periods, Are sent into the world,--no little thing, When this unbounded possibility Into the outer silence is withdrawn. Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread 70 Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!