| |
| DEATH ’S but one more to-morrow. Thou art gray | |
| With many a death of many a yesterday. | |
| O yearning heart that lacked the athlete’s force | |
| And, stumbling, fell upon the beaten course, | |
| And looked, and saw with ever glazing eyes | 5 |
| Some lower soul that seemed to win the prize! | |
| Lo, Death, the just, who comes to all alike, | |
| Life’s sorry scales of right anew shall strike. | |
| Forth, through the night, on unknown shores to win | |
| The peace of God unstirred by sense of sin! | 10 |
| There love without desire shall, like a mist | |
| At evening precious to the drooping flower, | |
| Possess thy soul in ownership, and kissed | |
| By viewless lips, whose touch shall be a dower | |
| Of genius and of winged serenity, | 15 |
| Thou shalt abide in realms of poesy. | |
| There soul hath touch of soul, and there the great | |
| Cast wide to welcome thee joy’s golden gate. | |
| Freeborn to untold thoughts that age on age | |
| Caressed sweet singers in their sacred sleep, | 20 |
| Thy soul shall enter on its heritage | |
| Of God’s unuttered wisdom. Thou shalt sweep | |
| With hand assured the ringing lyre of life, | |
| Till the fierce anguish of its bitter strife, | |
| Its pain, death, discord, sorrow, and despair, | 25 |
| Break into rhythmic music. Thou shalt share | |
| The prophet-joy that kept forever glad | |
| God’s poet-souls when all a world was sad. | |
| Enter and live! Thou hast not lived before; | |
| We were but soul-cast shadows. Ah, no more | 30 |
| The heart shall bear the burdens of the brain; | |
| Now shall the strong heart think, nor think in vain. | |
| In the dear company of peace, and those | |
| Who bore for man life’s utmost agony, | |
| Thy soul shall climb to cliffs of still repose, | 35 |
| And see before thee lie Time’s mystery, | |
| And that which is God’s time, Eternity; | |
| Whence sweeping over thee dim myriad things, | |
| The awful centuries yet to be, in hosts | |
| That stir the vast of heaven with formless wings, | 40 |
| Shall cast for thee their shrouds, and, like to ghosts, | |
| Unriddle all the past, till, awed and still, | |
| Thy soul the secret hath of good and ill. | |
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