"But let my falling limbs beneath My Mother's smile recline, And prayers sustain my laboring breath From out her sacred shrine. "And let the cross beside my bed In its dread presence rest; And let the absolving words be said To ease a laden breast. "Thou, Lord, where'er we lie, canst aid; But He who taught His own To live as one, will not upbraid The dread to die alone." The death of Gerontius was Newman's ideal Christian death, and Gerontius does not die alone; he is upborne, refreshed by the prayers of his friends. Of Newman's sacred songs, "The Pillar of the Cloud" is, as we know, put first by some critics. And yet for musical diction, for sweetness and all the beauty of artistic technique, the song of the soul in "The Dream" equals if not surpasses it. "Take me away, and in the lowest deep, There let me be, And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, Told out for me." In "Verses on Various Occasions" there is the picture of the resigned souls expecting the Blessed Vision. "Waiting for the Morning" was written at Oxford, 1835. It begins: "They are at rest; We may not stir the heaven of their repose With loud-voiced grief, or passionate request, Or selfish plaints for those Who in the mountain grots of Eden lie, And hear the fourfold river as it passes by." By "Eden" Newman symbolized the paradise--the resting-place of souls--of the fourfold rivers. Here they patiently abide, "And soothing sounds Blend with the neighboring waters as they glide; Posted along the haunted garden's bounds Angelic forms abide, Echoing as words of watch, o'er lawn and grove, The verses of that hymn which seraphs chant above." The fulness of higher meditation and knowledge is in the triumphant song of the Soul, but "Waiting for the Morning" contains its suggestion, just as "The Lady of Shalott" by Lord Tennyson contains the germ of the exquisite "Elaine." The dedication of "The Dream of Gerontius" reads, in English: "To the Most Beloved Brother, John Joseph Gordon, Priest of the Order of St. Philip de Neri, whose soul is in the Place of Refreshment.[10] All Souls' Day, 1865."