I heard this sung around New Year's many years ago. It's a simple poem, sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.

I'm thinking about it now, because a guy I knew in grade school recently committed suicide. He was handsome, popular, recently married, and highly intelligent. No-one knows why he did it. I saw his picture in an old yearbook the other day, still smiling and happy.

Here's the song.

"It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it each and all,
A song of those who answer not
However we may call.
They throng the silence of the breast,
We see them as of yore,
The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet,
Who walk with us no more.

'Tis hard to take the burden up
When these have laid it down.
They brightened every joy of life,
They softened every frown.
But oh, 'tis good to think of them
When we are troubled sore;
Thanks be to God that such have been,
Though they are here no more.

More homelike seems the vast unknown
Since they have entered there;
'Tis not so hard to follow them,
However they may fare.
They cannot be where God is not,
On any sea or shore;
Whate'er betides,Thy love abides,
Our God, forevermore."

Happy New Year, and may the lessons of the old year never leave us.