Gone in the bloom of youth, the flower of life,
Ere yet his morning hours had wholly shone:
Gone from a world of promises how rife!
With all our bright hopes, gone!

His plans of life all form'd and firmly set,
A plenteous future wooing him to stay,
A sphere in which glad heart and duty met —
And yet, he must away!

Where were thy charms, O Clyde! to let him go?
Those charms he loved so much! thy classic shores;
Thy lochs that take the ocean's ebb and flow,
And knew his skilful oars:

Thy misty mountains and mysterious Kyles;
Thy grand sea firth, that in blue beauty floats
Around the weird traditionary isles;
Thy pleasure-freighted boats.

All could not stay him! nor the clinging hearts
That lived for him, or for his sake would die;
Nor sleepless watching, nor physician's arts
Restore life's breaking tie.

Thou hast no reason in thy choice, blind Death!
Or reason larger than our thought may gauge —
Thus cutting short the young and useful breath,
Leaving decrepit age!

No reason, Death! Who knows what prompts thy choice
To take the lives that here we least can spare?
What greater need, than in this world of noise,
May claim them otherwhere?

Methinks thy very waywardness betrays
The life beyond. If earth, indeed, were all,
There were more equal measure in our days,
Less marvel in our fall.

And when upon the fever'd couch he lay,
Surely the truth of truths broke on his mind;
Else, why so calmly take the lonesome way,
Nor cast a look behind?

From all the world could give, he turn'd his face;
And pass'd from us — not lost, but only gone:
And this his legacy — The world's no place
To rest your hopes upon.