Vestis angelica.
It was a custom of the early English church for pious laymen to be carried in the hour of death to some monastery, that they might be clothed in the habit of the religious order, and might die amid the prayers of the brotherhood. The garment thus assumed was known as the Vestis Angelica. See Moroni: Dizionario di Erudizione Storico-Ecclesiastica, II. 78; XCVI. 212.Gather, gather! Stand
Round her on either hand!
O shining angel-band
More pure than priest!
A garment white and whole
Weave for this passing soul,
Whose earthly joy and dole
Have almost ceased.
Weave it of mothers' prayers,
Of sacred thoughts and cares,
Of peace beneath gray hairs,
Of hallowed pain; [29]
Weave it of vanished tears,
Of childlike hopes and fears,
Of joys, by saintly years
Washed free from stain.
Weave it of happy hours,
Of smiles and summer flowers,
Of passing sunlit showers,
Of acts of love;
Of footsteps that did go
Amid life's work and woe,--
Her eyes still fixed below,
Her thoughts above.
Then as those eyes grow dim
Chant we her best-loved hymn,
While from yon church-tower's brim
A soft chime swells.
Her freed soul floats in bliss
To unseen worlds from this,
Nor knows in which it is
She hears the bells.