Classic Poem

I .

A S , when the friends we dearly love
Go sailing over sea,
For all the joy to which they go,
Our hearts will saddened be;

So when upon that sea which rolls
All earth and heaven between,
Those whom we love, upon the deck
Of death's great ship are seen;

For all the joy to which they go,
Though heaven be e'er so sweet,
And e'er so good and wonderful
The folk they go to meet;

As with intensest gaze we watch,
And see them fade from sight,
God help us, but our human hearts
Are any thing but light!

II .

As, when the friends we dearly love
Have gone beyond the sea,
The far-off lands in which they bide
More real get to be;

So when our loved ones once have crossed
Death's lone and silent sea,
And in a country new and strange
Found immortality,

The heavenly land in which they bide,
Which erst did ever seem
An unsubstantial pageant vast, —
A dreamer's idle dream, —

Becomes as solid to my soul
As is the earth I tread,
What time I walk with reverent feet
The city of the dead.

Not Europe seems so real to me,
The Alps not so eterne,
As that dear land for which at times
My heart doth inly burn.

And not so sure am I that whom
The Atlantic's waves divide
Will meet again some happy day,
And linger side by side,

As that the day shall surely come
When I with all I love
Shall meet again, and clasp and kiss,
In that dear land above.