love,
  With loving welcomes greet each coming guest,
  With loving counsels aid, instruct and guide. 
  And as he looked, the countless, restless throng
  Seemed ever changing, ever moving on,
  So that this plain, comparing great to small,
  Seemed like a station near some royal town,
  Greater than London or old Babylon,
  Where all the roads from some vast empire meet,
  And many caravans or sweeping trains
  Bring and remove the ever-changing throng. 
  This plain a valley bordered, deep and still,
  The very valley of his fearful dream
  Seen from the other side, whose rising mists
  Were all aglow with ever-changing light,
  Like passing clouds above the setting sun,
  Through which as through a glass he darkly saw
  Unnumbered funeral-trains, in sable clad,
  To solemn music and with measured tread
  Bearing their dead to countless funeral-piles,
  As thick as heaps that through the livelong day
  With patient toil the sturdy woodmen rear,
  While clearing forests for the golden grain,
  And set aflame when evening’s shades descend,
  Filling the glowing woods with floods of light
  And ghostly shadows:  So these funeral-piles
  Send up their curling smoke and crackling flames.

  There eager flames devour an infant’s flesh;
  Here loving arms that risen infant clasp;
  There loud laments bewail a loved one lost;
  Here joyful welcomes greet that loved one found. 
  And there he saw a pompous funeral-train,
  Bearing a body clothed in robes of state,
  To blare of trumpet, sound of shell and drum,
  While many mourners bow in silent grief,
  And widows, orphans raise a loud lament
  As for a father, a protector lost;
  And as the flames lick up the fragrant oils,
  And whirl and hiss around that wasting form,
  An eager watcher from a better world
  Welcomes her husband to her open arms,
  The cumbrous load of pomp and power cast off,
  While waiting devas and the happy throng
  His power protected and his bounty blessed
  With joy conduct his unaccustomed steps
  Onward and upward, to those blissful seats
  Where all his stores of duties well performed,
  Of power well used and wealth in kindness given,
  Were garnered up beyond the reach of thieves,
  Where moths ne’er eat and rust can ne’er corrupt.

  Another train draws near a funeral-pile,
  Of aloes, sandal-wood and cassia built,
  And drenched with every incense-breathing oil,
  And draped with silks and rich with rarest flowers,
  Where grim officials clothed in robes of state
  Placed one in royal purple, decked with gems,
  Whose word had been a trembling nation’s law,
  Whose angry nod was death to high or low. 
  No mourners gather round this costly pile;
  The people shrink in terror from the sight. 
  But sullen soldiers there keep watch and ward
  While eager flames consume those nerveless hands
  So often raised to threaten or command,
  Suck out those eyes that filled the court with fear,
  And only left of all this royal pomp
  A little dust the winds may blow away.