She is at rest,
In God's own presence blest,
Whom, while with us, this day we loved to greet;
Her birthdays o'er,
She counts the years no more;
Time's footfall is not heard along the golden street.

When we would raise
A hymn of birthday praise,
The music of our hearts is faint and low;
Fear, doubt, and sin
Make dissonance within;
And pure soul-melody no child of earth may know.

That strange "new song,"
Amid a white-robed throng,
Is gushing from her harp in living tone;
Her seraph voice,
Tuned only to rejoice,
Floats upward to the emerald-archèd throne.*

No passing cloud
Her loveliness may shroud,
The beauty of her youth may never fade;
No line of care
Her sealed brow may wear,
The joy-gleam of her eye no dimness e'er may shade.

No stain is there
Upon the robes they wear,
Within the gates of pearl which she hath passed;
Like woven light,
All beautiful and bright,
Eternity upon those robes no shade may cast.

No sin-born thought
May in that home be wrought,
To trouble the clear fountain of her heart;
No tear, no sigh,
No pain, no death, be nigh
Where she hath entered in, no more to "know in part."

Her faith is sight,
Her hope is full delight,
The shadowy veil of time is rent in twain;
Her untold bliss--
What thought can follow this!
To her to live was Christ, to die indeed is gain.
 

Her eyes have seen
The King, no veil between,
In blood-dipped vesture gloriously arrayed:
No earth-breathed haze
Can dim that rapturous gaze;
She sees Him face to face on whom her guilt was laid.

A little while,
And they whose loving smile
Had melted 'neath the touch of lonely woe,
Shall reach her home,
Beyond the star-built dome;
Her anthem they shall swell, her joy they too shall know.

*Rev. iv. 8.