Auf Wiedersehen. - In Memory Of J.T.F.

Until we meet again!    That is the meaning     Of the familiar words, that men repeat         At parting in the street.     Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening     Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain         We wait for the Again!     The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow     Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay         Lamenting day by day,     And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,     We shall not find in its accustomed place         The one beloved face.     It were a double grief, if the departed,     Being released from earth, should still retain         A sense of earthly pain;     It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,     Who loved us here, should on the farther shore         Remember us no more.     Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,     That death is a beginning, not an end,         We cry to them, and send     Farewells, that better might be called predictions,     Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown         Into the vast Unknown.     Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,     And if by faith, as in old times was said,         Women received their dead     Raised up to life, then only for a season     Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain         Until we meet again!