"I cannot tell you ...."

I cannot tell you if the dead,

Who loved us fondly when on earth,

Walk by our side, sit at our hearth,

By ties of old affection led....

But this I know--in many dreams

They come to us from realms afar,

And leave the golden gates ajar

Through which immortal glory streams.

The Dead

And if with prayer and praise thy heart is filled,

Its fever cooled, its stormy passions stilled,

If thou dost catch faint glimpses of that shore

Where sorrow dies, and parting is no more,

And thou canst almost solve death's mystery,

O, then, God's handmaid, Beauty, dwells with thee!

Albert Laighton, Beauty