“Yet rarely through the charmed repose
  Unmixed the stream of motive flows,
  A flavor of its many springs,
  The tints of earth and sky it brings;
  In the still waters needs must be
  Some shade of human sympathy;
  And here, in its accustomed place,
  I look on memory’s dearest face;
  The blind by-sitter guesseth not
  What shadow haunts that vacant spot;
  No eyes save mine alone can see
  The love wherewith it welcomes me! 
  And still, with those alone my kin,
  In doubt and weakness, want and sin,
  I bow my head, my heart I bare
  As when that face was living there,
  And strive (too oft, alas! in vain)
  The peace of simple trust to gain,
  Fold fancy’s restless wings, and lay
  The idols of my heart away.

  “Welcome the silence all unbroken,
  Nor less the words of fitness spoken,—­
  Such golden words as hers for whom
  Our autumn flowers have just made room;
  Whose hopeful utterance through and through
  The freshness of the morning blew;
  Who loved not less the earth that light
  Fell on it from the heavens in sight,
  But saw in all fair forms more fair
  The Eternal beauty mirrored there. 
  Whose eighty years but added grace
  And saintlier meaning to her face,—­
  The look of one who bore away
  Glad tidings from the hills of day,
  While all our hearts went forth to meet
  The coming of her beautiful feet! 
  Or haply hers whose pilgrim tread
  Is in the paths where Jesus led;
  Who dreams her childhood’s Sabbath dream
  By Jordan’s willow-shaded stream,
  And, of the hymns of hope and faith,
  Sang by the monks of Nazareth,
  Hears pious echoes, in the call
  To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,
  Repeating where His works were wrought
  The lesson that her Master taught,
  Of whom an elder Sibyl gave,
  The prophecies of Cumae’s cave!

  “I ask no organ’s soulless breath
  To drone the themes of life and death,
  No altar candle-lit by day,
  No ornate wordsman’s rhetoric-play,
  No cool philosophy to teach
  Its bland audacities of speech
  To double-tasked idolaters,
  Themselves their gods and worshippers,
  No pulpit hammered by the fist
  Of loud-asserting dogmatist,
  Who borrows for the hand of love
  The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. 
  I know how well the fathers taught,
  What work the later schoolmen wrought;
  I reverence old-time faith and men,
  But God is near us now as then;
  His force of love is still unspent,
  His hate of sin as imminent;
  And still the measure of our needs
  Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds;
  The manna gathered yesterday
  Already savors of decay;
  Doubts to the world’s child-heart unknown
  Question us now from star and stone;
  Too little or too much we know,
  And sight is swift and faith is slow;