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THE LADY OF LA GARAYE.
CONCLUSION.
- PEACE to their ashes! Far away they lie,
- Among their poor, beneath the equal sky.
- Among their poor, who blessed them ere they went
- For all the loving help and calm content.
- Oh! happy beings, who have gone to hear
- “Well done, ye faithful servants,” sounding clear;
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- How easy all your virtues to admire;
- How hard, alas! to copy and aspire.
- Servant of God, well done! They serve God well
- Who serve His creatures: when the funeral bell
- Tolls for the dead, there’s nothing left of all
- That decks the scutcheon and the velvet pall
- Save this. The coronet is empty show:
- The strength and loveliness are hid below:
- The shifting wealth to others hath accrued:
- And learning cheers not the grave’ solitude:
- What’s DONE, is what remains! Ah, blessed they
- Who leave completed tasks of love to stay
- And answer mutely for them, being dead,
- Life was not purposeless, though Life be fled.
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- Even as I write, before me seem to rise,
- Like stars in darkness, well remembered eyes
- Whose light but lately shone on earth’s endeavour,
- Now vanished from this troubled world for ever.
- Oh! missed and mourned by many,—I being one,—
- HERBERT, not vainly thy career was run;
- Nor shall Death’s shadow, and the folding shroud,
- Veil from the future years thy worth allowed.
- Since all thy life thy single hope and aim
- Was to do good,—not make thyself a name,—
- ’Tis fit that by the good remaining yet,
- Thy name be one men never can forget.
- Oh! eyes I first knew in our mutual youth.
- So full of limpid earnestness and truth;
- Eyes I saw fading still, as day by day
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- The body, not the spirit’s strength, gave way;
- Eyes that I last saw lifting their farewell
- To the now darkened windows where I dwell,—
- And wondered, as I stood there sadly gazing,
- If Death were brooding in their faint upraising;
- If never more thy footstep light should cross
- My threshold stone—but friends bewail thy loss,
- And She bewidowed young, who lonely trains
- Children that boast thy good blood in their veins;
- Fair eyes,—your light was quenched while men still thought
- To see those tasks to full perfection brought!
- But GOOD is not a shapeless mass of stone,
- Hewn by man’s hands and worked by him alone;
- It is a seed God suffers One to sow,—
- Many to reap; and when the harvests grow,
- GOD giveth increase through all coming years,—
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- And lets us reap in joy, seed that was sown in tears.
- Brave heart! true soldier’s son; set at thy post,
- Deserting not till life itself was lost;
- Thou faithful sentinel for others’ weal,
- Clad in a surer panoply than steel,
- A resolute purpose,—sleep, as heroes sleep,—
- Slain, but not conquered! We thy loss must weep,
- And while our sight the mist of sorrow dims,
- Feel all these comforting words die down like hymns
- Hushed after service in cathedral walls;
- But proudly on thy name thy country calls,
- By thee raised higher than the highest place
- Yet won by any of thy ancient race.
- Be thy sons like thee! Sadly as I bend
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- Above the page, I write thy name, lost friend!
- With a friend’s name this brief book did begin,
- And a friend’s name shall end it: names that win
- Happy remembrance from the great and good;
- Names that shall sink not in oblivion’s flood,
- But with clear music, like a church‐bell’s chime,
- Sound through the river’s sweep of onward rushing Time!
