When the moments of friendship are numbered,
⁠How oft it appears
That the love which in laughter has slumbered
⁠Awakes now in tears!

We are friends that have journeyed together
⁠Long time, you and I;
Through sunshine and stormiest weather,
⁠But the old year must die.

And awhile in your hearts will awaken
⁠A bitter regret;
And the paths that your feet have forsaken
⁠You cannot forget.

Yet I pray you to mourn not my going,
⁠Though we have been friends;
What am I but one billow, whose flowing
⁠Has touched shore, and ends?

And the tale of my joy and my sorrow
⁠Lives but as the trace
Of the waves, that the tides of the morrow
⁠In turn shall efface.

Yet I leave you, as waves leave their treasures
⁠Of coral and shell,
A gift, passing sorrows and pleasures,
⁠Our friendship to tell.

I leave you the friendships, whose growing
⁠Has been from my birth;
There is nought that the tide brings in flowing
⁠Can equal their worth.
 
For as shells from the murmurs of ocean
⁠Steal echoes that last,
So in friendship is stored the emotion
⁠Of years that are past.

"Oh, sweet," she said, "that afternoon,
⁠The smile of God on land and sea;
And sweet through many a vanished June
Comes back, like a remembered tune,
⁠The silence of the shore to me!
Oh, sweet the moment was! the scene!
⁠The flashing of the shingles wet,
⁠The scent of clover and of bean,
Warm fragrance of the fields that met
⁠The salt fresh breezes of the sea!
The white sails dropping out of sight
⁠Were kindled into tawny flame,
And all the moor lay steeped in light
The way he came, the way he came!"
"Oh, sweet," she said, "the warm, wet reach
⁠Of glittering sand! the tide that woke
In tumult all along the beach,
⁠Yet made the very calm it broke!
Blue was the heaven that o'er us bent;
⁠The sheep upon a sunward slope
A quiet to the landscape lent;
⁠And all things gave a widening scope
To thoughts of peace and calm content,
⁠And all things seemed in league with hope
The way we went, the way we went!"

"Bury, oh dead, thy dead!" Hearken the call,
⁠Christ bids us leave our dead and follow him;
⁠What tho' the steps be feeble, and eyes dim
With tears that rise and burn, but may not fall?
Leave the unburied dead in. Death's great hall:
⁠For Christ is waiting and the dead are dead;
⁠We may not pause to smooth their burial bed,
We may not stay to spread their funeral pall.
Farewell, oh lovely dead, oh tender past!
⁠Who liest with stone-cold brow and lips that miss
⁠The passionate farewell and last long kiss.
Oh dead! shall this cold parting be the last?
⁠In the dim future's promise may there be
⁠No past, no present — knit in one for thee?

"Bury, oh dead, thy dead!" Can Death's behest
⁠Close the pale eyelids? Can dead fingers fold
⁠Dead hands in peace, or in the graveyard cold
Commit the soulless body to its rest?
guns rise and set; each evening in the west
⁠Dim clouds attend the funeral of the day;
⁠Night falls; men sleep; and still, oh dead: ye stay.
No peace for me on earth's unearthly breast
Haunted by you. I would, I would, oh dead,
⁠I would ye had no immortality!
⁠I would ye too could sleep and let me be!
Rest, rest! hath not your requiem been said?
⁠Ah no! With faces turned to me they lie;
⁠They rise, they answer — "No, we cannot die!"