1854- LINES TO EDWARD FORBES. 267 



And yet He called thee in thy prime, 



Summoned thee in the very hour 

 When unto us it seemed that Time 

 Had ripened every manly power : 

 And thou, who hadst through sun and shower, 

 On many a shore, in many a clime, 

 Gathered from air, and earth, and sky, 

 Their hidden truths, wert called to die. 



We went about in blank dismay, 



We murmured at God's sovereign will ; 

 We asked why thou wert taken away, 

 Whose place no one of us could fill : 

 Our throbbing hearts would not be still ; 

 Our bitter tears we could not stay : 

 We asked, but could no answer find ; 

 And strove in vain to be resigned. 



When, lo ! from out the Silent Land, 



Our faithless murmurs to rebuke, 

 In answer to our vain demand 



Thy solemn Spirit seemed to look ; 

 And pointing to a shining book, 

 That opened in thy shadowy hand, 

 Bade us regard those words, which light 

 Not of this world, made clear and bright : > 

 " If as on earth I learned full well, 



Thou canst not tell the reason why 

 The lowliest moss or smallest shell 

 Is called to live, or called to die, 

 Till thou with searching, patient eye, 

 Through ages more than man can tell, 

 Hast traced its history back in Time 

 And over Space, from clime to clime ; 



" If all the shells the tempests send, 



As I have ever loved to teach ; 

 And all the creeping things that wend 

 Their way along the sandy beach, 

 Have pedigrees that backward reach, 

 Till in forgotten Time they end ; 

 And may as tribes for ages more, 

 As if immortal, strew the shore ; 



