IN MEMORIAM A. H. H. STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove; Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou. Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they. We have but faith: we cannot know, For knowledge is of things we see ; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness: let it grow. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before, But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear : But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. Forgive what seem'd my sin in me, Forgive my grief for one removed, Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise. 1849. I I HELD it truth, with him who sings But who shall so forecast the years Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Than that the victor Hours should scorn II OLD yew, which graspest at the stones That name the underlying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. The seasons bring the flower again, And bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee the clock Beats out the little lives of men. O, not for thee the glow, the bloom, And gazing on thee, sullen tree, |