Auf Wiedersehen. - In Memory Of J.T.F.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Until we meet again!    That is the meaning
    Of the familiar words, that men repeat
        At parting in the street.
    Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
    Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
        We wait for the Again!

    The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow
    Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay
        Lamenting day by day,
    And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
    We shall not find in its accustomed place
        The one beloved face.

    It were a double grief, if the departed,
    Being released from earth, should still retain
        A sense of earthly pain;
    It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
    Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
        Remember us no more.

    Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
    That death is a beginning, not an end,
        We cry to them, and send
    Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
    Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
        Into the vast Unknown.

    Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
    And if by faith, as in old times was said,
        Women received their dead
    Raised up to life, then only for a season
    Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
        Until we meet again!