Classic Poem

Can it be possible no words shall welcome
Our coming feet?
How will it look, that face that we have cherished,
When next we meet?
Will it be changed, so glorified and saintly
That we shall know it not?
Will there be nothing that will say, “I love thee,
And I have not forgot”?

Oh! faithless heart, the same loved face transfigured
Shall meet thee there,
Less sad, less wistful, in immortal beauty
Divinely fair.
The mortal veil, washed pure with many weepings,
Is rent away,
And the great soul that sat within its prison
Hath found the day.

In the clear morning of that other country,
In paradise,
With the same face that we have loved and cherished
She shall arise!
Let us be patient, we who mourn, with weeping,
Some vanished face,
The Lord has taken, but to add more beauty
And a diviner grace.

And we shall find once more, beyond earth's sorrows
Beyond these skies,
In the fair city of the “sure foundations,”
Those heavenly eyes.
With the same welcome, shining through their sweetness,
That met us here;
Eyes, from whose beauty God has banished weeping
And wiped away the tear.