Classic Poem

A soul of sunbeams and wind,
So pure from the gates of birth,
That how could we hope to bind
That winged, ethereal mind
To a perishing form of earth?

She quivered within its hold,
Yet we loved her, ah, so well,
That we thought our love might fold
Her spirit against the cold
Of this clime wherein we dwell;

But still through our tenderest word,
Through the ocean's murmurous tone,
Through the song of our sweetest bird,
She listened and ever heard
A music beyond our own.

The shadow troubled her sore
That holdeth our mortal eyes;
We weep, for forevermore
The vision of that dim shore
In beauty before her lies;

For the voice grew clear in her ears,
While she gladdened our daily sight;
The shadow slipt from the years;
She vanished amid our tears
And fled out into the light.

A soul of sunbeams and wind,
A spirit of radiant mirth,
A heart that thrilled to its kind,
A life with our lives entwined,
An ecstasy fled from earth.

We meet our loss as we may;
We turn to our toils again;
But a glory has passed from the day,
And all that we think or say
Bears a hidden sense of pain.

Yet we look on time's swift stream
No more with a faithless eye,
Nor of life and death can deem
That the sleep forgets the dream,
Who have seen our dear one die.

From the cloudland whither she passed,
Where her passing left a rift,
A fugitive gleam is cast
On our path, and we hold it fast,
As we treasure her latest gift.