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!