TO REV. JAMES G. WITTED.

ON THE SUDDEN DEATH OF HIS BROTHER.

Death ever snatching up some valued friend,
Sudden as the vexed lightning strips the boughs
Of the strong oak!  Oh! will it never end?
This scourge, that fades the crimson from my Rose
Of Life!  Will heaven never interpose,

And stay its shafts, till the last arrow cleave
My own lashed heart, and my eyes forever close
Their weary watchings?  For my Friend I grieve.

He, for his Brother-Friend, while I, in Sorrow, weave

A wreath of Cypress for the sable Urn

Of Grief, in which the tears of Memory
Are shrined, as well as in the hearts they burn,
With their slow, withering intensity.
Far o’er the wave, how many souls there be
Who feel the stroke that has surprised us here!

But not of Friends alone—the agony
That rends the bosom of the wife; the tear

When he, with his strong frame, and manly glow
Of robust health, gave waiting death his hand,

Who may expect exemption from the blow
That thus strikes down the ablest in the land?
Our spirits, too, my Friend, at Death’s command,
Must follow his, that the deep mysteries,
That lie beyond the scope of man, may stand

Disrobed before us, and with soul-like ease

We may peruse the secrets of the infinities.

The dead are ever with us: ever round
About us hovering, like rainbows o’er
The cloud.  There’s not a foot of ground

On which we tread, where Truth has gone before,
That is not hallowed thence, for evermore,
By the blest footprints of the souls we love.
There is no death.  The Shape that guards the shore
Where Life’s frail journey ends, is Mercy’s dove,

That brings us renewed life from life’s great source above.

Well may’st thou grieve!  A noble manhood sat
Upon his brow; and in his eye, a true
Nobility of Soul—an eye whereat
Friendship might light her paling lamp anew.

He found a milder home than that which drew
His footsteps from that dear beloved strand,
With the fond Brother of his youth, to view
The boundless garden of the Western land,

Pleased with its generous clime, its breezes soft and bland.

Not far from where the Mississippi’s wave
Rolls its rich freightage through the fertile West,
The hands of Stranger-Friends have made his grave,
And borne his body to its shrouded rest.
God oft removes the friends whom we love best:

That through Affliction we may nearer come
To him and them.  Through suffering are we blest,
And purified; surmount life’s darkest gloom.

He, Friend, perchance, was called, to bring thee nearer home!
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