the rose shall glow
And bloom with youth that ne'er shall fail.

Ne'er shall crabbed age their beauty dim
With wrinkled brow and tresses grey,
Nor arid leanness eat away
The vigour of the rounded limb.

Racked with his own destroying pains
Shall fell Disease, who now attacks
Our aching frames, his force relax
Fast fettered in a thousand chains:

While from its far celestial throne
The immortal body, victor now,
Shall watch its old tormentor bow
And in eternal tortures groan.

Why do the clamorous mourners wail
In bootless sorrow murmuring?
And why doth grief unreasoning
God's righteous ordinance assail?

Hushed be your voices, ye that mourn;
Ye weeping mothers, dry the tear;
Let none lament for children dear,
For man through Death to Life is born.

So do dry seeds grow green again,
Now dead and buried in the earth,
And rising to a second birth
Clothe as of old the verdant plain.

Take now, O earth, the load we bear,
And cherish in thy gentle breast
This mortal frame we lay to rest,
The poor remains that were so fair.

For they were once the soul's abode,
That by God's breath created came;
And in them, like a living flame,
Christ's precious gift of wisdom glowed.

Guard thou the body we have laid
Within thy care, till He demand
The creature fashioned by His hand
And after His own image made.

The appointed time soon may we see
When God shall all our hopes fulfil,
And thou must render to His will
Unchanged the charge we give to thee.

For though consumed by mould and rust
Man's body slowly fades away,
And years of lingering decay
Leave but a handful of dry dust;

Though wandering winds, that idly fly,
Should his disparted ashes bear
Through all the wide expanse of air,
Man may not perish utterly.

Yet till Thou dost build up again
This mortal structure by Thy hand,
In what far world wilt Thou command
The soul to rest, now free from stain?

In Abraham's bosom it shall dwell
'Mid verdant bowers, as Lazarus lies
Whom Dives sees with longing eyes
From out the far-off fires of hell.

We trust the words our Saviour said
When, victor o'er grim Death, he cried
To him who suffered at His side
"In Mine own footsteps shalt thou tread."

See, open to the faithful soul,
The shining paths of Paradise;
Now