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Your home is stricken with some sorrow drear ;

Your eyes, perchance, made blind by many a tear.

A face you loved is gone, a voice is still,

And on your threshold falls a dreary chill ;

And Memory mourns about your lonely door

And dreams of vanished forms that come no more.

And, as to Bethany came grief of old,

For one who slept in marble silence cold,

So sorrow to your Bethany has come,

And solitude has fallen on your home.

Again weeps Martha, bowed at Mary's side, -

"Had He been here our loved one had not died."

Beloved, He is here, and all is best ;

The Master still in Bethany is guest.

List to the comfort of the word He Saith-

"I am the Life. In me there is no death!"

It was not death that led your loved to Heaven,

'T was life, the endless life the Lord hath given.

God gave His angels charge o'er all your ways ;