When you in sickness lie,
No more the field is green, nor blue the sky ;
No more invisible and lovely things
The forest haunt with songs and rustling wings ;
Back from my stricken sense the world recedes,
And beauty's garden is a patch of weeds.

Then can I [catch]1 in music's blithest tone
Nought but the closing cadence of a moan;
Then can I joy no more in sound unheard
Save in the silence of the written word;
The melodies that once could charm my ear
Forbode some final dissonance of fear.

Earth has no health, when health from you is fled;
No angel stands between the quick and death;
The awful unity of life and death
Is sacramental in your labouring breath;
And as I watch you I can hear Him call
Who is the king of Nothing or of All.

But ah! your nature surely cannot owe
To that grim tyrant such an overthrow;
You seem a creature of an alien strain
From force and fate, and unallied to pain;
Could you but meet their Master, little while
Would lapse ere you had won him to a smile.