Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.

Burial of the Dead

John Keble (1792–1866)

I THOUGHT to meet no more, so dreary seem’d

Death’s interposing veil, and thou so pure,

Thy place in Paradise

Beyond where I could soar;

Friend of this worthless heart! but happier thoughts

Spring like unbidden violets from the sod,

Where patiently thou tak’st

Thy sweet and sure repose.

The shadows fall more soothing: the soft air

Is full of cheering whispers like thine own;

While Memory, by thy grave,

Lives o’er thy funeral day;

The deep knell dying down, the mourners pause,

Waiting their Saviour’s welcome at the gate.—

Sure with the words of Heaven

Thy spirit met us there,

And sought with us along th’ accustom’d way

The hallow’d porch, and entering in, beheld

The pageant of sad joy

So dear to Faith and Hope.

O! hadst thou brought a strain from Paradise

To cheer us, happy soul, thou hadst not touch’d

The sacred springs of grief

More tenderly and true,

Than those deep-warbled anthems, high and low,

Low as the grave, high as th’ Eternal Throne,

Guiding through light and gloom

Our mourning fancies wild,

Till gently, like soft golden clouds at eve

Around the western twilight, all subside

Into a placid Faith,

That even with beaming eye

Counts thy sad honours, coffin, bier, and pall;

So many relics of a frail love lost,

So many tokens dear

Of endless love begun.

Listen! it is no dream: th’ Apostles’ trump

Gives earnest of th’ Archangel’s;—calmly now,

Our hearts yet beating high

To that victorious lay,

Most like a warrior’s to the martial dirge

Of a true comrade, in the grave we trust

Our treasure for awhile:

And if a tear steal down,

If human anguish o’er the shaded brow

Pass shuddering, when the handful of pure earth

Touches the coffin-lid;

If at our brother’s name,

Once and again the thought, ‘for ever gone’,

Come o’er us like a cloud; yet, gentle spright,

Thou turnest not away,

Thou know’st us calm at heart.

One look, and we have seen our last of thee,

Till we too sleep and our long sleep be o’er.

O cleanse us, ere we view

That countenance pure again,

THOU, who canst change the heart, and raise the dead!

As THOU art by to soothe our parting hour,

Be ready when we meet,

With Thy dear pardoning words.