Classic Poem

And so Death took your hero.
How kind to you was Fate!
For Death but crystallizes Life,
And you need only wait.
Death keeps him, dear, safe from all tainting touch:
I in your place could scarcely weep so much.

For I, too, lost my hero.
Would God it were by death!
Would God that he were sainted,
That I might spend my breath
In praying Heaven to make my deeds so sweet
That he might welcome me when we should meet!

Alas, alas, my hero!
How often we bow down,
Deceived, to crown a coward king
And deify a clown!
Pass on; compared to me you know not grief.
You have lost him, but I have lost Belief!