Daniel Wheeler

O Dearly loved!     And worthy of our love! No more     Thy aged form shall rise before     The bushed and waiting worshiper,     In meek obedience utterance giving     To words of truth, so fresh and living,     That, even to the inward sense,     They bore unquestioned evidence     Of an anointed Messenger!     Or, bowing down thy silver hair     In reverent awfulness of prayer,     The world, its time and sense, shut out     The brightness of Faith's holy trance     Gathered upon thy countenance,     As if each lingering cloud of doubt,     The cold, dark shadows resting here     In Time's unluminous atmosphere,     Were lifted by an angel's hand,     And through them on thy spiritual eye     Shone down the blessedness on high,     The glory of the Better Land!     The oak has fallen!     While, meet for no good work, the vine     May yet its worthless branches twine,     Who knoweth not that with thee fell     A great man in our Israel?     Fallen, while thy loins were girded still,     Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet,     And in thy hand retaining yet     The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell     Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free,     Across the Neva's cold morass     The breezes from the Frozen Sea     With winter's arrowy keenness pass;     Or where the unwarning tropic gale     Smote to the waves thy tattered sail,     Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat     Against Tahiti's mountains beat;     The same mysterious Hand which gave     Deliverance upon land and wave,     Tempered for thee the blasts which blew     Ladaga's frozen surface o'er,     And blessed for thee the baleful dew     Of evening upon Eimeo's shore,     Beneath this sunny heaven of ours,     Midst our soft airs and opening flowers     Hath given thee a grave!     His will be done,     Who seeth not as man, whose way     Is not as ours! 'T is well with thee!     Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay     Disquieted thy closing day,     But, evermore, thy soul could say,     "My Father careth still for me!"     Called from thy hearth and home, from her,     The last bud on thy household tree,     The last dear one to minister     In duty and in love to thee,     From all which nature holdeth dear,     Feeble with years and worn with pain,     To seek our distant land again,     Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing     The things which should befall thee here,     Whether for labor or for death,     In childlike trust serenely going     To that last trial of thy faith!     Oh, far away,     Where never shines our Northern star     On that dark waste which Balboa saw     From Darien's mountains stretching far,     So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there,     With forehead to its damp wind bare,     He bent his mailed knee in awe;     In many an isle whose coral feet     The surges of that ocean beat,     In thy palm shadows, Oahu,     And Honolulu's silver bay,     Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue,     And taro-plains of Tooboonai,     Are gentle hearts, which long shall be     Sad as our own at thought of thee,     Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed,     Whose souls in weariness and need     Were strengthened and refreshed by thine.     For blessed by our Father's hand     Was thy deep love and tender care,     Thy ministry and fervent prayer,     Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine     To Israel in a weary land.     And they who drew     By thousands round thee, in the hour     Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep,     That He who bade the islands keep     Silence before Him, might renew     Their strength with His unslumbering power,     They too shall mourn that thou art gone,     That nevermore thy aged lip     Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn,     Of those who first, rejoicing, heard     Through thee the Gospel's glorious word,     Seals of thy true apostleship.     And, if the brightest diadem,     Whose gems of glory purely burn     Around the ransomed ones in bliss,     Be evermore reserved for them     Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn     Many to righteousness,     May we not think of thee as wearing     That star-like crown of light, and bearing,     Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band,     Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand;     And joining with a seraph's tongue     In that new song the elders sung,     Ascribing to its blessed Giver     Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever!     Farewell!     And though the ways of Zion mourn     When her strong ones are called away,     Who like thyself have calmly borne     The heat and burden of the day,     Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth     His ancient watch around us keepeth;     Still, sent from His creating hand,     New witnesses for Truth shall stand,     New instruments to sound abroad     The Gospel of a risen Lord;     To gather to the fold once more     The desolate and gone astray,     The scattered of a cloudy day,     And Zion's broken walls restore;     And, through the travail and the toil     Of true obedience, minister     Beauty for ashes, and the oil     Of joy for mourning, unto her!     So shall her holy bounds increase     With walls of praise and gates of peace     So shall the Vine, which martyr tears     And blood sustained in other years,     With fresher life be clothed upon;     And to the world in beauty show     Like the rose-plant of Jericho,     And glorious as Lebanon