Yet such things were, to him, not wholly lost,—
Permitted, with his wandering eyes light-proof,
To have Mr visions rendered full enough
By many a ministrant accomplished ghost:
And seeing, to sounds of softly-turned book-leaves,
Sappho's crown-rose, and Meleager's spring,
And Gregory's starlight, on Greek-burnished eves:
Till Sensual and Unsensual seemed one thing
Viewed from one level;—earth's reapers at the sheaves,
Not plainer than Heaven's angels marshalling!
HUGH STUART BOYD.
HIS DEATH, 1848.
BELOVED friend, who living many years
With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun,
Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune
To visible nature's elemental cheers!
God has not caught thee to new hemispheres
Because thou wast aweary of this one:—
I think thine angel's patience first was done,
simple and upright of human beings, passed out of his long darkness through death in the summer of 1848; Dr. Adam Clarke's daughter and biographer, Mrs. Smith, (happier in this than the absent) fulfllling a double filial duty as she sate by the death-bed of her father's friend and hers.
