Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 4 | Page 9

the solemn angel
Hath evil wrought
Her
funeral anthem is a glad evangel,--
The good die not!
God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly
What He hath given;

They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly
As in His heaven.
And she is with thee; in thy path of trial
She walketh yet;
Still with
the baptism of thy self-denial
Her locks are wet.
Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields of harvest
Lie white in view

She lives and loves thee, and the God thou servest
To both is true.
Thrust in thy sickle! England's toilworn peasants
Thy call abide;


And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy presence,
Shall glean beside!

1845.
DANIEL WHEELER
Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of Friends, who had labored
in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the
islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on
a religious visit to this country.
O Dearly loved!
And worthy of our love! No more
Thy aged form
shall rise before
The bushed and waiting worshiper,
In meek
obedience utterance giving
To words of truth, so fresh and living,

That, even to the inward sense,
They bore unquestioned evidence

Of an anointed Messenger!
Or, bowing down thy silver hair
In
reverent awfulness of prayer,
The world, its time and sense, shut out

The brightness of Faith's holy trance
Gathered upon thy
countenance,
As if each lingering cloud of doubt,
The cold, dark
shadows resting here
In Time's unluminous atmosphere,
Were lifted
by an angel's hand,
And through them on thy spiritual eye
Shone
down the blessedness on high,
The glory of the Better Land!
The oak has fallen!
While, meet for no good work, the vine
May yet
its worthless branches twine,
Who knoweth not that with thee fell
A
great man in our Israel?
Fallen, while thy loins were girded still,

Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet,
And in thy hand retaining yet

The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell
Unharmed and safe, where, wild
and free,
Across the Neva's cold morass
The breezes from the
Frozen Sea
With winter's arrowy keenness pass;
Or where the
unwarning tropic gale
Smote to the waves thy tattered sail,
Or
where the noon-hour's fervid heat
Against Tahiti's mountains beat;

The same mysterious Hand which gave
Deliverance upon land and
wave,
Tempered for thee the blasts which blew
Ladaga's frozen
surface o'er,
And blessed for thee the baleful dew
Of evening upon

Eimeo's shore,
Beneath this sunny heaven of ours,
Midst our soft
airs and opening flowers
Hath given thee a grave!
His will be done,
Who seeth not as man, whose way
Is not as ours!
'T is well with thee!
Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay
Disquieted
thy closing day,
But, evermore, thy soul could say,
"My Father
careth still for me!"
Called from thy hearth and home,--from her,

The last bud on thy household tree,
The last dear one to minister
In
duty and in love to thee,
From all which nature holdeth dear,
Feeble
with years and worn with pain,
To seek our distant land again,

Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing
The things which should befall
thee here,
Whether for labor or for death,
In childlike trust serenely
going
To that last trial of thy faith!
Oh, far away,
Where never
shines our Northern star
On that dark waste which Balboa saw

From Darien's mountains stretching far,
So strange, heaven-broad,
and lone, that there,
With forehead to its damp wind bare,
He bent
his mailed knee in awe;
In many an isle whose coral feet
The surges
of that ocean beat,
In thy palm shadows, Oahu,
And Honolulu's
silver bay,
Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue,
And taro-plains of
Tooboonai,
Are gentle hearts, which long shall be
Sad as our own
at thought of thee,
Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed,
Whose souls
in weariness and need
Were strengthened and refreshed by thine.

For blessed by our Father's hand
Was thy deep love and tender care,


Thy ministry and fervent prayer,--
Grateful as Eshcol's clustered
vine
To Israel in a weary land.
And they who drew
By thousands round thee, in the hour
Of
prayerful waiting, hushed and deep,
That He who bade the islands
keep
Silence before Him, might renew
Their strength with His
unslumbering power,
They too shall mourn that thou art gone,
That
nevermore thy aged lip
Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn,
Of
those who first, rejoicing, heard
Through thee the Gospel's glorious
word,--
Seals of thy true apostleship.
And, if the brightest diadem,


Whose gems of glory purely burn
Around the ransomed ones in
bliss,
Be evermore reserved for them
Who here, through toil and
sorrow, turn
Many to righteousness,
May we not think of thee as
wearing
That star-like crown of light, and bearing,
Amidst Heaven's
white and blissful band,
Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand;
And
joining with a seraph's tongue
In that new song the elders sung,

Ascribing to its blessed Giver
Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever!
Farewell!
And though the ways of Zion mourn
When her strong
ones are called away,
Who like thyself have calmly borne
The heat
and burden of the day,
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth
His
ancient watch around us keepeth;
Still, sent from His creating hand,

New witnesses for Truth shall stand,
New instruments to sound
abroad
The Gospel of a risen Lord;
To gather to the fold once more

The desolate and gone astray,
The scattered of a cloudy day,
And
Zion's broken walls restore;
And, through the travail and the toil
Of
true