In Memory of Ella

     The seasons of earth come and go
     Like a river’s ceaseless flow,
Forever here and forever there,
Down from the hills of an unknown where,
     And away to the depths below!
In eternal flight and eternal rest
Like a baby swung on its mother’s breast.

     Do the rivers of earth run dry,
     Or cease where they hurry by
Do the secret springs forget to shed
The coolest dews of their mountain bed
     Caught fresh from the nearer sky?
They leap in the light down their valleys green,
They return in light through the heavens, unseen.

     Ah me! could we only know,
     When our loved ones come and go!
Soaring or sinking they rise and fall,
Rocked on the breast of the Mother of all,
     Who carries and soothes them so.
Should we fear when they pass, from our vision, above,
Borne in the arms of an Infinite Love?

     When they sink like a vanishing wave
     To the solemn deeps that gave,
Though lost to sight of the straining eye, 
They hover like mist in our love a blue sky
     And mellow the sharp-lined grave!
The hot brow bared to their humid breath
Is soothed till we could be in love with Death.

     My Darling! I sit and so dream
     On the away of the ocean stream
Where floating but one swift year ago
We were rocked by the same tide’s ebb and flow,
     In the same sun’s summer gleam!
But the restless swing of a deeper sea
Has caught and borne thee afar from me!

     I saw thee day by day
     Drifting and drifting away,
Till the last gleam out of thy lifted eye
Was the purple light of another sky,
     Flashed over our dusky ray!
Can we call thee lost, so rapt from our sight
In the fathomless deeps of ineffable light?

     Ah no! We are dim and rak;
     But thou, as the morning lark
Unseen for soaring in heaven canst rain
Such melodies over our earthly pain
     That the dull sense whispers “Hark!”
While the quickened soul is ravished above
To know Death throws not a shadow on Love!

     Thou, Ella, so lovely, so dear,
     So faithful and true in thy sphere,
Worn out by an ardor of duty too strong
For the frame it consumed as it bore thee along,
     I will not believe thee less near
Than when thy brown eyes shed laughter in mine,
Or the pale lips of love gave their ultimate sign!

     For shall He not lead to their own
     Al hearts, in our lives’ either zone?
Who clad the new Summer in green and gold,
And led through the sky to their mountain fold
     The flocks of white billows, that down
Ran as rill, brook and river with cataracts bound,
Transfigured or veiled, never lost in their round!

     Aye, the fingers that, dying, could trace
     Thy vision of beauty and grace,
Shall weave us new garlands of asphodel now.
To match the bright amaranth set on thy brow!
     The lips that breathed truth in their place,
Shall sing the New Song with the eldest refrain,
The Song of White Love ever living though slain!