379. Irony by Louis Untermeyer. Monroe, Harriet, ed. 1917. The New Poetry: An Anthology

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

379. Irony

By Louis Untermeyer


WHY are the things that have no death
The ones with neither sight nor breath!
Eternity is thrust upon
A bit of earth, a senseless stone.
A grain of dust, a casual clod	5
Receives the greatest gift of God.
A pebble in the roadway lies—
It never dies.

The grass our fathers cut away
Is growing on their graves to-day;	10
The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow
Eternally will come and go.
There is no kind of death to kill
The sands that lie so meek and still….
But Man is great and strong and wise—	15
And so he dies.