The first rough month that ends the flowerless time
⁠Has come, and in this worldly city of ours
The churches slowly peal their Lenten chime,
⁠Till Easter-day shall deck their shrines with flowers;
⁠But to the mourners these are leaden hours,
Sad, sad the hours that have no chime to tell
⁠Of coming happiness, nor music hid
Behind the clangor of the wasting bell.
⁠No priest bath bent above this coverlid,
No sacerdotal mercies have made light
The pangs of dying to this heart to-night;
⁠Forlorn of flowers this wintry bier must be,
And yet will I be bold to lay thereon
A fading yellow daffodil that shone
⁠In some far western orchard where the dead
Perchance has wandered in his infancy;
⁠For he, too, who lies worn on that dim bed,
He, too, was once, like us, a lover true
Of flowers and verse and the springs wonders new,
⁠Until the chilling shadow came between,
⁠And all the sorrow that his eyes had seen,
Blanched to those eyes the tender heavens and blue.

No gift of ours is immortality;
⁠We cannot bid the soul that dies to-day
Revive in all men's memories when we die.
⁠The destiny that bids one fame decay,
⁠Another flourish, we must all obey;
Disease, and disappointment, and the worm
⁠Of benefits forgotten, like a deer
Hunted him down; the spirit of reform
⁠Passed him upon his upward pathway drear.
Others more fortunate shall win their way
⁠Into success, but let their strength revere
The shattered virtue that lies weak to-day.

Temperate he was and calm, whom the world judged
⁠Most violent; loving the people best,
⁠Some idle pleasures that the rich possessed
He, for their reckless pride and folly, grudged
Those whom of all men he was last to hate.
⁠Early he learned, by bitter ways of toil -
Labor that teaches men to bear and wait -
That he who will not be the fool of fate,
⁠Whirled in life's undistinguishable coil,
Must struggle with both hands and haply bleed.
In such a school Time sowed a hardy seed,
⁠That overgrew the garden of the heart,
⁠And bid its bearer choose no thornless part
In the world's warfare. It may be indeed
⁠That, heavy with all the burden of all the pain
That wept around him, and the great wrongs borne
⁠By men and women in the social strain,
⁠He less than others of soft words was fain,
And knew the scathing power of sudden scorn.
Yet was he true and good, fed by desires
⁠Pure as the dreams of some Utopian sage,
Who towards a visioned heaven on earth aspires.
⁠Somewhat behind, in much before his age,
Honor be his, that when the tides ran high
Of rank with rank, inflamed with creed and lie,
⁠He, suffering most, yet bravely strove to assuage
The sea of pain, and hush the gathering cry.

Songs there have been enough in lofty phrase
⁠On men who all the heights of fame had scaled;
Let this one rhyme suffice to sing the praise
⁠Of one who wrestled with his fate, and failed.

Sweet Love is dead:
⁠Where shall we bury him?
In a green bed,
With no stone at his head,
⁠Nor tears nor prayers to worry him.

Do you think he will sleep,
⁠Dreamless and quiet?
Yes, if we keep
Silence, nor weep
⁠O'er the grave where the ground-worms riot.

By his tomb let us part.
⁠But hush! he is waking!
He bath winged his dart,
And this mock-cold heart
⁠With the woe of want is aching.

Feign we no more
⁠Sweet Love lies breathless;
All we forswore
Be as before!
⁠Death may die, but Love is deathless.

Tend thou our children, Paulus, take this care
⁠That stirs my charrèd bones with lingering pain
Thy hands, unwont, must learn a mother's arts,
⁠Thy neck must bend to burthens once in twain.

And when - for all the house will look to thee -
⁠From thine embrace the children comfort seek,
Add to thy kisses mine; thine own grief hide,
⁠As fain to cheat their lips with tearless cheek.