Until we meet again! That is the meaning <br />Of the familiar words, that men repeat <br />At parting in the street. <br />Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening <br />Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain <br />We wait for the Again! <br /> <br />The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow <br />Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay <br />Lamenting day by day, <br />And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow, <br />We shall not find in its accustomed place <br />The one beloved face. <br /> <br />It were a double grief, if the departed, <br />Being released from earth, should still retain <br />A sense of earthly pain; <br />It were a double grief, if the true-hearted, <br />Who loved us here, should on the farther shore <br />Remember us no more. <br /> <br />Believing, in the midst of our afflictions, <br />That death is a beginning, not an end, <br />We cry to them, and send <br />Farewells, that better might be called predictions, <br />Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown <br />Into the vast Unknown. <br /> <br />Faith overleaps the confines of our reason, <br />And if by faith, as in old times was said, <br />Women received their dead <br />Raised up to life, then only for a season <br />Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain <br />Until we meet again!<br /><br />Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-harbour-auf-wiedersehen/
