On The Death Of --- Poem by Richard Monckton Milnes Houghton

I'm not where I was yesterday,
Though my home be still the same,
For I have lost the veriest friend
Whom ever a friend could name;
I'm not where I was yesterday,
Though change there be little to see,
For a part of myself has lapsed away
From Time to Eternity.


I have lost a thought that many a year
Was most familiar food
To my inmost mind, by night or day,
In merry or plaintive mood;
I have lost a hope, that many a year
Looked far on a gleaming way,
When the walls of Life were closing round,
And the sky was sombre grey.


For long, too long, in distant climes
My lot was cast, and then,
A frail and casual intercourse
Was all I had with men;
But lonelily in distant climes
I was well content to roam,
And felt no void, for my heart was full
O' the friend it had left at home.


And now I was close to my native shores,
And I felt him at my side,
His spirit was in that homeward wind,
His voice in that homeward tide:
For what were to me my native shores,
But that they held the scene,
Where my youth's most genial flowers had blown,
And affection's root had been?


I thought, how should I see him first,
How should our hands first meet,
Within his room,--upon the stair,--
At the corner of the street?
I thought, where should I hear him first,
How catch his greeting tone,--
And thus I went up to his door,
And they told me he was gone!


Oh! what is Life but a sum of love,
And Death but to lose it all?
Weeds be for those that are left behind,
And not for those that fall!
And now how mighty a sum of love
Is lost for ever to me . . . . . .
. . . No, I'm not what I was yesterday,
Though change there be little to see.