Classic Poem

I HAD a Friend who died in early youth!
— And often in those melancholy dreams,
When my soul travels through the umbrage deep
That shades the silent world of memory,
Methinks I hear his voice! Sweet as the breath
Of balmy ground-flowers stealing from some spot
Of sunshine sacred, in a gloomy wood,
To everlasting spring.
In the church-yard
Where now he sleeps — the day before he died,
Silent we sat together on a grave;
Till gently laying his pale hand on mine,
Pale in the moonlight that was coldly sleeping
On heaving sod and marble monument, —
This was the music of his last farewell!
" Weep not my brother! though thou seest me led
" By short and easy stages, day by day,
" With motion almost imperceptible
" Into the quiet grave. God's will be done.
" Even when a boy, in doleful solitude
" My soul oft sat within the shadow of death!
" And when I look'd along the laughing earth,
" Up the blue heavens, and through the middle air
" Joyfully ringing with the sky-lark's song,
" I wept! and thought how sad for one so young
" To bid farewell to so much happiness.
" But Christ hath call'd me from this lower world,
" Delightful though it be — and when I gaze
" On the green earth and all its happy hills,
" 'Tis with such feelings as a man beholds
" A little Farm which he is doom'd to leave
" On an appointed day. Still more and more
" He loves it as that mournful day draws near,
" But hath prepar'd his heart — and is resign'd. "
— Then lifting up his radiant eyes to heaven,
He said with fervent voice — " O what were life
" Even in the warm and summer-light of joy.
" Without those hopes, that like refreshing gales
" At evening from the sea, come o'er the soul
" Breath'd from the ocean of eternity.
" — And oh! without them who could bear the storms
" That fall in roaring blackness o'er the waters
" Of agitated life! Then hopes arise
" All round our sinking souls, like those fair birds
" O'er whose soft plumes the tempest hath no power,
" Waving their snow-white wings amid the darkness,
" And wiling us with gentle motion, on
" To some calm island! on whose silvery strand
" Dropping at once, they fold their silent pinions, —
" And as we touch the shores of paradise
" In love and beauty walk around our feet! "