GRIEFAs the funeral train with its honoured deadOn its mournful way went sweeping,While a sorrowful nation bowed its headAnd the whole world joined in weeping,I thought, as I looked on the solemn sight,Of the one fond heart despairing,And I said to myself, as in truth I might,“How sad must be thissharing.”To share the living with even Fame,For a heart that is only human,Is hard, when Glory asserts her claimLike a bold, insistent woman;Yet a great, grand passion can put asideOr stay each selfish emotion,And watch, with a pleasure that springs from pride,Its rival—the world’s devotion.But Death should render to love its own,And my heart bowed down and sorrowedFor the stricken woman who wept aloneWhile even herdeadwas borrowed;Borrowed from her, the bride—the wife—For the world’s last martial honour,As she sat in the gloom of her darkened life,With her widow’s grief fresh upon her.He had shed the glory of Love and FameIn a golden halo about her;She had shared his triumphs and worn his name:But, alas! he had died without her.He had wandered in many a distant realm,And never had left her behind him,But now, with a spectral shape at the helm,He had sailed where she could not find him.It was only a thought, that came that dayIn the midst of the muffled drummingAnd funeral music and sad display,That I knew was right and becomingOnly a thought as the mourning trainMoved, column after column,Bearing the dead to the burial plainWith a reverence grand as solemn.
As the funeral train with its honoured deadOn its mournful way went sweeping,While a sorrowful nation bowed its headAnd the whole world joined in weeping,I thought, as I looked on the solemn sight,Of the one fond heart despairing,And I said to myself, as in truth I might,“How sad must be thissharing.”
To share the living with even Fame,For a heart that is only human,Is hard, when Glory asserts her claimLike a bold, insistent woman;Yet a great, grand passion can put asideOr stay each selfish emotion,And watch, with a pleasure that springs from pride,Its rival—the world’s devotion.
But Death should render to love its own,And my heart bowed down and sorrowedFor the stricken woman who wept aloneWhile even herdeadwas borrowed;Borrowed from her, the bride—the wife—For the world’s last martial honour,As she sat in the gloom of her darkened life,With her widow’s grief fresh upon her.
He had shed the glory of Love and FameIn a golden halo about her;She had shared his triumphs and worn his name:But, alas! he had died without her.He had wandered in many a distant realm,And never had left her behind him,But now, with a spectral shape at the helm,He had sailed where she could not find him.
It was only a thought, that came that dayIn the midst of the muffled drummingAnd funeral music and sad display,That I knew was right and becomingOnly a thought as the mourning trainMoved, column after column,Bearing the dead to the burial plainWith a reverence grand as solemn.