Page:The songs that Quinte sang.djvu/78

74 Just three-score years and ten he spent with us, The span of Life allotted unto man, And then before old age had dimmed his eye Or clouded his great intellect and brain, God’s voice spake out to him and called him hence. And he obeyed the call, nor shrank when Death, That grim and ghastly King of Terrors, laid His hand upon his noble heart, and stilled Its kindly throbs. No coward sign he made, But undismayed and fearless, he went forth Into the great, mysterious unknown, Whose entrance is the Grave, whose password—Death.

And now to him all secrets are revealed; Those mysteries, unfathomed and profound, Those problems which we ever try to solve With all the might of our poor human ken— Problems which baffled even his great brain— Are all unfolded now unto his sight Like printed pages of an open book. Ah! If he only could come back again For one brief space of time, and speak to us Of those great mysteries, profound and vast, Which are no longer mysteries to him. But that can never be, such thoughts are vain, For our earth-blinded eyes must e’en as his