Looking Beyond

What is there in the summer air to-nightThat minds me of a sweet day long o'erpast?What is there in this waning mellow lightThat brings old memories to me thick and fast?

Is it the scent of purple heliotrope,That steals up to me from the garden-bed?Or the white clover on the meadow slope?Or the lush strawberries glowing ripe and red?

Oh, Life! oh, Death! oh, mystic veil of sense,That stretches 'tween this world and that to come!Will that life be sufficient recompenseFor what we suffer here in silence dumb?

Our deepest sorrows never can be told!Our ghastliest wounds we cover up from sight!The griefs that make our youthful brows grow oldAre those we hide in silence and in night.

I wonder if the dead have hope, or thought,For us who sorrow on in mortal clay!I wonder if their heavenly lives have broughtThem so much joy, they never look away—

Away to earth! where those they loved are stillBreasting the stormy waves of adverse fate,Looking, with eyes so mutely pitiful,For the unfolding of the golden gate.

I grow so weary, sometimes, it would beSweet as a mother's kiss upon my brow,To know that those who've crossed the Unknown Sea,Those whom I loved, have pity for me now;

To know that when I sorrow they look downWith tender eyes from Immortality,—To know that those who wear a fadeless crownIn heaven's glory, still have care for me.