Rev. John White Chadwick, who has now joined “the choir invisible,”
wrote of the friends who had gone before in this poem:
It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it, each and all--
A song of those who answer not,
However we may call;
They throng the silence of the breast,
We see them as of yore--
The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet,
Who walk with us no more.
’Tis hard to take the burden up
When these have laid it down;
They brightened all the joy of life,
They softened every frown;
But, O, ’tis good to think of them
When we are troubled sore!
Thanks be to God that such have been,
Tho they are here no more.
More homelike seems the vast unknown,
Since they have entered there;
To follow them were not so hard,
Wherever they may fare;
They can not be where God is not,
On any sea or shore;
Whate’er betides, Thy love abides,
Our God, for evermore.
(1378)
=Heaven, Getting to=--See OBLIGATION TO THE CHURCH.
=Heaven Open=--See LOOKING UP.