HYMN.
Sung at the Consecration of Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri.
Our Father! with a holy trust
And faith, we come before thee now;
Look down upon this hallowed dust,
As low before thy Throne we bow.
Wilt thou not grant that we may deem
The grave an entrance to the sky;
A prelude to a long bright dream,
And glories hid from mortal eye?
A passage to that radiant shore,
Where golden harps give back such notes
As seraphs only number o'er,
And bliss in sweetest measure floats?
And as we lay each cherished one
To rest, amid this shade and bloom,
Father! be life for them begun,—
A deathless life beyond the tomb.
