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Gone! slipped away so silently
While yet we deemed him all our own!
And he was with us yesterday,
And now may be before the Throne.

 

And he was living as we are,
We met in life's most common ways;
And now he is so far--how far?
And lives--but not in mortal days.

 

And he has marveled at this change,
And dimly guessed what death might be;
And now he is to us as strange,
And he has faced eternity.

 

Beside the door that ope'd for him
We shudder at a cold wind's breath;
A sense of something great and dim
Shuts round us, and we whisper--death!

 

Hands reaching out, that reach in vain;
Love's passionate pleadings, lost in air;
No message ever comes again
From that dim land that lieth--where?

 

Into what undiscovered land
Leads that long voyage through the dark?
How fares, when watchers at the strand
Lose sight, the ocean-daring bark?

 

Here we are stopped. O deep! O grave!
That takes our best, and leaves us so
To think--what's ours of all we have,
And what is sure of all we know?

 

The curtain drops to change the scene;
Life works in new conditions there,
But works; whatever intervene
Somewhere our dead are living. Where?

 

On far-off shores our voices fall,
And only echo speaks again;
Yet, sometime, we shall know it all--
That strange life grow familiar. When?