Of one in sun and shade the same,
In weal and woe my steady friend,
Whatever by that holy name
The angels comprehend.

Not blind to faults and follies, thou
Hast never failed the good to see,
Nor judged by one unseemly bough
The upward-struggling tree.

These light leaves at thy feet I lay,Poor common thoughts on common things,

Which time is shaking, day by day, Like feathers from his wings, Chance shootings from a frail life-tree, To nurturing care but little known, Their good was partly learned of thee Their folly is my own.

That tree still clasps the kindly mould,

Its leaves still drink the twilight dew, And weaving its pale green with gold, Still shines the sunlight through.

There still the morning zephyrs play, And there at times the spring bird sings,

And mossy trunk and fading spray
Are flowered with glossy wings.

Yet, even in genial sun and rain,
Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade;
The wanderer on its lonely plain

Erelong shall miss its shade.

O friend beloved, whose curious skill Keeps bright the last year's leaves and flowers,

With warm, glad summer thoughts to fill

The cold, dark, winter hours!

Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring
May well defy the wintry cold,
Until, in Heaven's eternal spring,
Life's fairer ones unfold.

And, through the shade

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Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind

From his loved dead?

Who does not cast

On the thronged pages of his memory's book,

At times, a sad and half-reluctant look, Regretful of the Past?

Alas! the evil which we fain would shun

We do, and leave the wished-for good undone :

Our strength to-day Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall;

Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all
Are we alway.

Yet who, thus looking backward o'er his years,

Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears,

If he hath been

Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, To cheer and aid, in some ennobling

And left, as its young beauty fled, An ashen memory in its stead, The twilight of a parted day

Whose fading light is cold and vain; The heart's faint echo of a strain Of low, sweet music passed away. That true and loving heart, - that gift Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound, Bestowing, with a glad unthrift, Its sunny light on all around, Affinities which only could Cleave to the pure, the true, and good; And sympathies which found no rest, Save with the loveliest and best. Of them of thee- remains there naught

But sorrow in the mourner's breast?A shadow in the land of thought? No!

Even my weak and trembling faith

Can lift for thee the veil which doubt And human fear have drawn about The all-awaiting scene of death.

Even as thou wast I see thee still;
And, save the absence of all ill
And pain and weariness, which here
Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear,
The same as when, two summers back,
Beside our childhood's Merrimack,
I saw thy dark eye wander o'er
Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore,
And heard thy low, soft voice alone
Midst lapse of waters, and the tone
Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown,
There's not a charm of soul or brow,

Of all we knew and loved in thee,
But lives in holier beauty now,

Baptized in immortality! Not mine the sad and freezing dream Of souls that, with their earthly mould, Cast off the loves and joys of old, Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam, As pure, as passionless, and cold; Nor mine the hope of Indra's son,

-

Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, Life's myriads blending into one, In blank annihilation blest; Dust-atoms of the infinite, Sparks scattered from the central light, And winning back through mortal pain Their old unconsciousness again. No! I have FRIENDS in Spirit Land,-. Not shadows in a shadowy band,

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The turf laid lightly o'er thee there.
That church, whose rites and liturgy,
Sublime and old, were truth to thee,
Undoubted to thy bosom taken,
As symbols of a faith unshaken.
Even I, of simpler views, could feel
The beauty of thy trust and zeal;
And, owning not thy creed, could see
How deep a truth it seemed to thee,
And how thy fervent heart had thrown
O'er all, a coloring of its own,
And kindled up, intense and warm,
A life in every rite and form,
As, when on Chebar's banks of old,
The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled,
A spirit filled the vast machine,-
A life "within the wheels was seen.