And said:  “What think you, father, is it hard,
This dying?” “Well, my boy,” he said, “We’ll try
And make it easy with the present God. 
But, as I judge, though more by hope than sight,
It seemeth harder to the lookers on,
Than him that dieth.  It may be, each breath,
That they would call a gasp, seems unto him
A sigh of pleasure; or, at most, the sob
Wherewith the unclothed spirit, step by step,
Wades forth into the cool eternal sea. 
I think, my boy, death has two sides to it,
One sunny, and one dark; as this round earth
Is every day half sunny and half dark. 
We on the dark side call the mystery death;
They on the other, looking down in light,
Wait the glad birth, with other tears than ours.” 
“Be near me, father, when I die;” he said. 
“I will, my boy, until a better sire
Takes your hand out of mine, and I shall say: 
I give him back to thee; Oh! love him, God;
For he needs more than I can ever be. 
And then, my son, mind and be near in turn,
When my time comes; you in the light beyond,
And knowing all about it; I all dark.”

And so the days went on, until the green
Shone through the snow in patches, very green: 
For, though the snow was white, yet the green shone. 
And hope of life awoke within his heart;
For the spring drew him, warm, soft, budding spring,
With promises.  The father better knew. 
God, give us heaven.  Remember our poor hearts. 
We never grasp the zenith of the time;
We find no spring, except in winter prayers.

Now he, who strode a king across his fields,
Crept slowly through the breathings of the spring;
And sometimes wept in secret, that the earth,
Which dwelt so near his heart with all its suns,
And moons, and maidens, soon would lie afar
Across some unknown, sure-dividing waste. 
Yet think not, though I fall upon the sad,
And lingering listen to the fainting tones,
Before I strike new chords that seize the old
And waft their essence up the music-stair—­
Think not that he was always sad, nor dared
To look the blank unknown full in the void: 
For he had hope in God, the growth of years,
Ponderings, and aspirations from a child,
And prayers and readings and repentances. 
Something within him ever sought to come
At peace with something deeper in him still. 
Some sounds sighed ever for a harmony
With other deeper, fainter tones, that still
Drew nearer from the unknown depths, wherein
The Individual goeth out in God,
And smoothed the discord ever as they grew. 
Now he went back the way the music came,
Hoping some nearer sign of God at hand;
And, most of all, to see the very face
That in Judea once, at supper time,
Arose a heaven of tenderness above
The face of John, who leaned upon the breast
Soon to lie down in its last weariness.