Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise But oftentimes celest al benedictions Assume this dark disguise. We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers There is no Death! What seems so is transition; Is but a suburb of the life elysian, She is not dead, -the child of our affection,- Where she no longer needs our poor protection, In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead. Day after day, we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air; Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Thus do we walk with her and keep unbroken Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, Not as a child shall we again behold her; In our embrace we again enfold her, But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, Clothed with celestial grace; And beautiful with all the soul's expansion Shall we behold her face. And though, at times, impetuous with emotion The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, We will be patient, and assuage the feeling By silence sanctifying, not concealing, -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. [The following poem was written by the late President Garfield during his senior year in William's College, Mass., and was pubIshed in William s Quarterly for March, 1856.] And now with noiseless step sweet memory comes The enchanted shadow land where memory dwells? Surcharged with sorrow, cast their sombre shade Upon the sunny, joyous land below. Others are floating though the dreamy air, I see the shadow of my former self, Gliding from childhood up to man's estate; The path of youth winds down through many a vale, -James Abram Garfield. The Old Familiar Faces. I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. |