For Charles Dickens

Above our dear Romancers dust     Grief takes the place of praise,     Because of sudden cypress thrust     Amid the old-earned bays.     Ah! when shall such another friend     By Englands fireside sit,     To tell her of her faults, yet blend     Sage words with kindly wit?     He brings no pageants of the past     To wile our hearts away;     But wins our love for those who cast     Their lot with ours to-day.     He gives us laughter glad and long;     He gives us tears as pure;     He shames us with the published wrong     We meted to the poor.     Through webs and dust and weather-stains,     His sunlike genius paints,     On lifes transfigured chancel-panes,     The angels and the saints.     He bade us to a lordly feast,     And gave us of his best;     And vanished, while the mirth increased,     To be Anothers guest.     For Death had summoned him, in haste,     Where hands of the Divine     Pour out, for him who toiled to taste,     The Paradisal wine.     Well, God be thanked, we did not wait     His greatness to discern     By funeral lights, in that Too-Late     When ashes fill the urn.