On Receiving News of the Death of S. Drejer, M.A.

In heaven, my friend, your deep-blue flowers will grow
forever. You will see the true condition
of everything: will see what, here below,
you only glimpsed with darkling intuition ---
only divined through spiritual force ---
of life's hid currents and deep aspirations;
will scan the flood --- past men's imaginations ---
and gaze with joy on truth's immortal source.

For you were truth's own champion, valiant, free,
armored with youth and sturdy self-possession,
a man who made himself, as I could see
reading your bold, self-confident expression.
With all your soul you searched for truth, among
the high and beautiful, the pure and holy ---
this is no idle fancy! --- and you slowly
mounted truth's towering ladder, rung by rung.

Yet if your soul, at freedom in the skies,
should turn its gaze upon the stream of being
that flows forever, and not recognize
it --- and yourself --- and know what it was seeing,
then (why not think the thought out to its end,
so bleak my soul rejects it like a liar!) ---
then life's Lord could not be life's Father, Drejer,
and God could not be our God --- or our friend.

Farewell! We think of you with every breath,
our circle shattered, glassy-eyed, unsleeping;
we weep your unanticipated death,
though life can spare us little time for weeping.
--- You hurry on, winged spirit, all the while,
spurning this dark and dust for life immortal.
Behold God's realm! And there, at mercy's portal,
greet us one day with your familiar smile.