You gain by loss, if that seem'd small
Possess'd, which, being gone, turns all
Surviving good to vanity.
Oh, Fred, this makes it sweet to die!
Say to yourself: ''Tis comfort yet
I made her that which I regret;
And parting might have come to pass
In a worse season; as it was,
Love an eternal temper took,
Dipp'd, glowing, in Death's icy brook!'
Or say, 'On her poor feeble head
This might have fallen: 'tis mine instead!
And so great evil sets me free
Henceforward from calamity.
And, in her little children, too,
How much for her I yet can do!'
And grieve not for these orphans even;
For central to the love of Heaven
Is each child as each star to space.
This truth my dying love has grace
To trust with a so sure content,
I fear I seem indifferent.
You must not think a child's small heart
Cold, because it and grief soon part.
Fanny will keep them all away,
Lest you should hear them laugh and play.
Before the funeral's over. Then
I hope you'll be yourself again,
And glad, with all your soul, to find
How God thus to the sharpest wind
Suits the shorn lambs. Instruct them, Dear,
For my sake, in His love and fear.
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