List to the Master’s gracious voice,
Which bids the sorrowing heart rejoice,
E’en though the tomb’s dark portals close
Above the slumbering form’s repose:
Angels their holy vigils keep
Around its calm, unearthly sleep.

Come ye around her couch to bend:
Faith can its quickening influence lend.
Look on the form reposing there,
In death so beautifully fair.
Pure temple for th’immortal guest,
Meet type of Heav’n’s all-perfect rest.

What though your tears as dew be shed
Around the loved, the early dead?
What though no more that speaking eye
To greet your answering gaze be nigh?
What though the gay, glad spring-note be
As hushéd strain of memory?

Has she not met, in yon bright sphere,
Those vanished ones, to love so dear?
Was not the Savior’s blessing shed
As incense o’er the infant head?
To Me their sinless souls be giv’n:
Of such the kingdom is of Heav’n.

Fearless, that gracious call she heard;
And, as the heav’n-aspiring bird
Plumes joyfully its golden wing,
Mid realms of purer light to sing,
So did her spotless soul ascend,
Before her Maker’s throne to bend.

Life was to her a joyous dream:
She wakes where Heav’n’s rich glories beam.
Calmly, as to her earthly rest,
Her fair young head its pillow pressed:
The angel-guard ye might not see,
Nor hear their strain of melody.

Would ye recall her from that sphere,
Though ransomed by one prayer, one tear?
A few short years of grief and pain,
And ye shall meet your own again,
Where life’s pure tide, unsullied swells,
And love shall breathe no sad farewells.

Mary Whitwell Hale
Poems, 1840