y lean on Thee entranced,
In calm and perfect rest:
Give us that Peace, oh Lord,
Divine and blest,
Thou keepest for those hearts who love Thee best.

VERSE: LIFE IN DEATH AND DEATH IN LIFE

I.

If the dread day that calls thee hence,
Through a red mist of fear should loom,
(Closing in deadliest night and gloom
Long hours of aching dumb suspense,)
And leave me to my lonely doom.

I think, beloved, I could see
In thy dear eyes the loving light
Glaze into vacancy and night,
And still say, "God is good to me,
And all that He decrees is right."

That, watching thy slow struggling breath,
And answering each imperfect sign,
I still could pray thy prayer and mine,
And tell thee, dear, though this was death,
That God was love, and love divine.

Could hold thee in my arms, and lay
Upon my heart thy weary head,
And meet thy last smile ere it fled;
Then hear, as in a dream, one say,
"Now all is over,--she is dead."

Could smooth thy garments with fond care,
And cross thy hands upon thy breast,
And kiss thine eyelids down to rest,
And yet say no word of despair,
But, through my sobbing, "It is best."

Could stifle down the gnawing pain,
And say, "We still divide our life,
She has the rest, and I the strife,
And mine the loss, and hers the gain:
My ill with bliss for her is rife."

Then turn, and the old duties take--
Alone now--yet with earnest will
Gathering sweet sacred traces still
To help me on, and, for thy sake,
My heart and life and soul to fill.

I think I could check vain weak tears,
And toil,--although the world's great space
Held nothing but one vacant place,
And see the dark and weary years
Lit only by a vanished grace.

And sometimes, when the day was o'er,
Call up the tender past again:
Its painful joy, its happy pain,
And live it over yet once more,
And say, "But few more years remain."

And then, when I had striven my best,
And all around would smiling say,
"See how Time makes all grief decay,"
Would lie down thankfully to rest,
And seek thee in eternal day.

II.

But if the day should ever rise--
It could not and it cannot be--
Yet, if the sun should ever see,
Looking upon us from his skies,
A day that took thy heart from me;

If loving thee still more and more,
And still so willing to be blind,
I should the bitter knowledge find,
That Time had eaten out the core
Of love, and left the empty rind;

If the poor lifeless words, at last,
(The soul gone, that was on