In that far world unknown,
Over that distant hill,
May dwell the loved and lost,
Lost—yet beloved still;
I have a yearning hope,
Half longing, and half pain,
That by that mountain pass
They may return again.
Space may keep friends apart,
Death has a mighty thrall;
There is another gulf
Harder to cross than all;
Yet watching that far road,
My heart beats full and fast—
If they should come once more,
If they should come at last!
See, down the mountain side
The silver vapours creep;
They hide the rocky cliffs.
They hide the craggy steep,
They hide the narrow path
That comes across the hill—
Oh, foolish longing, cease,
Oh, beating Heart, be still!
VERSE: BEYOND
We must not doubt, or fear, or dread, that love for
life is only given,
And that the calm and sainted dead will meet estranged
and cold in heaven:-
Oh, Love were poor and vain indeed, based on so harsh
and stern a creed.
True that this earth must pass away, with all the
starry worlds of light,
With all the glory of the day, and calmer tenderness
of night;
For, in that radiant home can shine alone the immortal
and divine.
Earth’s lower things—her pride, her fame, her science, learning, wealth and power— Slow growths that through long ages came, or fruits of some convulsive hour, Whose very memory must decay—Heaven is too pure for such as they.
They are complete: their work is done.
So let them sleep in endless rest.
Love’s life is only here begun, nor is, nor
can be, fully blest;
It has no room to spread its wings, amid this crowd
of meaner things.
Just for the very shadow thrown upon its sweetness
here below,
The cross that it must bear alone, and bloody baptism
of woe,
Crowned and completed through its pain, we know that
it shall rise again.
So if its flame burn pure and bright, here, where our air is dark and dense, And nothing in this world of night lives with a living so intense; When it shall reach its home at length—how bright its light! how strong its strength!
And while the vain weak loves of earth (for such base
counterfeits abound)
Shall perish with what gave them birth—their
graves are green and fresh around,
No funeral song shall need to rise, for the true Love
that never dies.
If in my heart I now could fear that, risen again,
we should not know
What was our Life of Life when here—the
hearts we loved so much below;
I would arise this very day, and cast so poor a thing
away.
But Love is no such soulless clod: living, perfected
it shall rise
Transfigured in the light of God, and giving glory
to the skies:
And that which makes this life so sweet, shall render
Heaven’s joy complete.