The years will pass with rapid pace
    Till through these limbs the life shall flow,
    And the long-parted spirit go
  To seek her olden dwelling-place.

  Then shall the body, that hath lain
    And turned to dust in slow decay,
    On airy wings be borne away
  And join its ancient soul again.

  Therefore our tenderest care we spend
    Upon the grave:  and mourners go
    With solemn dirge and footstep slow—­
  Love’s last sad tribute to a friend.

  With fair white linen we enfold
    The dear dead limbs, and richest store
    Of Eastern unguents duly pour
  Upon the body still and cold.

  Why hew the rocky tomb so deep,
    Why raise the monument so fair,
    Save that the form we cherish there
  Is no dead thing, but laid to sleep?

  This is the faithful ministry
    Of Christian men, who hold it true
    That all shall one day live anew
  Who now in icy slumber lie.

  And he whose pitying hand shall lay
    Some friendless outcast ’neath the sod,
    E’en to the almighty Son of God
  Doth that benignant service pay.

  For this same law doth bid us mourn
    Man’s common fate, when strangers die,
    And pay the tribute of a sigh,
  As when our kin to rest are borne.

  Of holy Tobit ye have read,
    (Grave father of a pious son),
    Who, though the feast was set, would run
  To do his duty by the dead.

  Though waiting servants stood around,
    From meat and drink he turned away
    And girt himself in haste to lay
  The bones with weeping in the ground.

  Soon Heaven his righteous zeal repays
    With rich reward; the eyes long blind
    In bitter gall strange virtue find
  And open to the sun’s clear rays.

  Thus hath our Heavenly Father shown
    How sharp and bitter is the smart
    When sudden on the purblind heart
  The Daystar’s healing light is thrown.

  He taught us, too, that none may gaze
    Upon the heavenly demesne
    Ere that in darkness and in pain
  His feet have trod the world’s rough ways.

  So unto death itself is given
    Strange bliss, when mortal agony
    Opens the way that leads on high
  And pain is but the path to Heaven.

  Thus to a far serener day
    Our body from the grave returns;
    Eternal life within it burns
  That knows nor languor nor decay.

  These faces now so pinched and pale,
    That marks of lingering sickness show,
    Then fairer than the rose shall glow
  And bloom with youth that ne’er shall fail.

  Ne’er shall crabbed age their beauty dim
    With wrinkled brow and tresses grey,
    Nor arid leanness eat away
  The vigour of the rounded limb.

  Racked with his own destroying pains
    Shall fell Disease, who now attacks
    Our aching frames, his force relax
  Fast fettered in a thousand chains: