Euthanatos

In Memory of Mrs. Thellusson.     Forth of our ways and woes,     Forth of the winds and snows,     A white soul soaring goes,     Winged like a dove:     So sweet, so pure, so clear,     So heavenly tempered here,     Love need not hope or fear her changed above:     Ere dawned her day to die,     So heavenly, that on high     Change could not glorify     Nor death refine her:     Pure gold of perfect love,     On earth like heavens own dove,     She cannot wear, above, a smile diviner.     Her voice in heavens own quire     Can sound no heavenlier lyre     Than here no purer fire     Her soul can soar:     No sweeter stars her eyes     In unimagined skies     Beyond our sight can rise than here before,     Hardly long years had shed     Their shadows on her head:     Hardly we think her dead,     Who hardly thought her     Old: hardly can believe     The grief our hearts receive     And wonder while they grieve, as wrong were wrought her.     But though strong grief be strong     No word or thought of wrong     May stain the trembling song,     Wring the bruised heart,     That sounds or sighs its faint     Low note of love, nor taint     Grief for so sweet a saint, when such depart.     A saint whose perfect soul,     With perfect love for goal,     Faith hardly might control,     Creeds might not harden:     A flower more splendid far     Than the most radiant star     Seen here of all that are in Gods own garden.     Surely the stars we see     Rise and relapse as we,     And change and set, may be     But shadows too:     But spirits that mans lot     Could neither mar nor spot     Like these false lights are not, being heavenly true.     Not like these dying lights     Of worlds whose glory smites     The passage of the nights     Through heavens blind prison:     Not like their souls who see,     If thought fly far and free,     No heavenlier heaven to be for souls rerisen.     A soul wherein love shone     Even like the sun, alone,     With fervour of its own     And splendour fed,     Made by no creeds less kind     Toward souls by none confined,     Could Deaths self quench or blind, Loves self were dead.