To have known him, to have loved him, After loneness long; And then to be estranged in life, And neither in the wrong; And now for death to set his seal— Ease me, a little ease, my song! By wintry hills his hermit-mound The sheeted snow-drifts drape, And houseless there the snow-bird flits Beneath the fir-tree’s crape: Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine That hid the shyest grape.
