Father! when I have passed, with deathly swoon,
Into the ghost-world, immaterial, dim,
O may nor time nor circumstance dislimn
My image from thy memory, as noon
Steals from the fainting bloom the cooling dew!
Like flower, itself completing bud and bell,
In lonely thicket, be thy sorrow true,
And in expression secret. Worse than hell
To see the grave hypocrisy—to hear
The crocodilian sighs of summer friends
Outraging grief’s assuasive, holy ends!
But thou art faithful, father, and sincere;
And in thy brain the love of me shall dwell
Like the memorial music in the curved sea-shell.