So, with a last good-bye,
In this grey hour you die
To us, as we to you;
Parting is dying too,
And distance, heart to heart despairing saith
Is but a name for Death.
To-morrow we shall say,
“Our thoughts reflect, to-day,
His quiet room upstairs,
The lonely look it wears
For all the house is desolate and dim
With want of only him.”
What household things shall stand,
Hallowed, because your hand
Has touched them! We shall miss
Your help in that or this,
And treasure even trivial words you said
As memories of the dead.
You will bear with you thus
Remembrances of us;
And, writing now and then
Of stranger lands and men,
Your tidings from afar shall reach us here
As from another sphere:
Just as if you, at last,
That greater sea had passed
Whose winds and waters yearn
Outwards, and never turn,
And, looking through the waste of silence lone
You called from the Unknown.
Even Death is nothing more
Than opening of a door
Through which men pass away
As stars into the day,
And we, who see not, blinded by the light
Cry, “They are lost in Night!”
Thus ever, near or far,
Life seems but where we are;
Yet those we bid Good-bye
Find Death is not to die,
As you, departing from our daily strife,
Go hence from Life to Life.
Clasp hands, and now Farewell!
The word’s a passing knell,
But ripening year by year
Life triumphs there as here,
Nor dark nor silent would the distance be
Could we but hear and see.