Explore "Be Not Dismayed" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Be not dismayed, be not dismayed when death / Sets its white seal upon some worshipped face. / Poor human nature for a little space / Must suffer anguish, when that last drawn breath / Leaves such long silence; but let not thy faith / Fail for a moment in God's boundless grace. / But know, oh know, He has prepared a place / Fairer for our dear dead than worlds beneath, / Yet not beneath; for those entrancing spheres / Surround our earth as seas a barren isle. / Ours is the region of eternal fears; / Theirs is the region where God's radiant smile / Shines outward from the centre, and gives hope / Even to those who in the shadows grope.
They are not far from us. At first though long / And lone may seem the paths that intervene, / If ever on the staff of prayer we lean / The silence will grow eloquent with song / And our weak faith with certitude wax strong. / Intense, yet tranquil; fervent, yet serene, / He must be who would contact World Unseen / And comrade with their Amaranthine throng; / Not through the tossing waves of surging grief / Come spirit-ships to port. When storms subside, / Then with their precious cargoes of relief / Into the harbour of the heart they glide. / For him who will believe and trust and wait / Death's austere silence grows articulate.