Who speak their feeling as it is,
    And weep the fulness from the mind:
    ‘It will be hard,’ they say, ‘to find
Another service such as this.’

My lighter moods are like to these,
    That out of words a comfort win;
    But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;

For by the hearth the children sit
    Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
    And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:

But open converse is there none,
    So much the vital spirits sink
    To see the vacant chair, and think,
‘How good! how kind! and he is gone.’