It seems that out of their flashing light my lost love appears to rise,
And another face that has haunted me all day with its wistful eyes
As we halted at church to-day; a face, a young girl's face, so sad,
Looked out among the crowd that gazed, and her dark eyes made me glad.
What strange, queer beings we are, a look, or a song, or a flower,
A scent on the air, a sound of the sea, they come with such power,
That the long years vanish away, and over death's murky tide
Spiritual bodies fearlessly walk, and stand with us side by side.
Gone is all distance and time, vanished far is the grave's eclipse.
Again sweet voices are in our ears, their breath upon our lips,
So, with that poor, strange child to-day, who has never heard Aimee's
name,
Little she thought that her earnest eyes rekindled a smouldering flame.
There was an old familiar look of the happy days once fled,
An old familiar look of one that I love as we love the dead.
Love her? love Aimee? do I love her less, because since I kissed her last
Over my desolate heart the tides of twenty-five years have passed?
I am longing to-night to hear her hymn, her sweet "Abide with me,"
As she sang it, leaning upon my breast the night I put out to sea.
I know it was only she I loved, and thought of that eventide;
But now I can fully endorse the draft, "O Lord with me abide,"
And spite of the heavy clouds that hang o'er my life path near and far,
I own with Vera that "Christ's love stands at each end of the mystic bar,"
And so much of the desert life has been travelled by night and day,
That the shores of the summer land are not so very far away.
And although I know there is one dark sea where black waves heave and
toss,
I know the Pilot who waits for me will carry me safely across.
My path down to that water's edge is one avenue of pines;
But though I walk amid shadows dim, o'erhead the bright sun shines.