120. When I Have Gone Weird Ways by John G. Neihardt. Rittenhouse, Jessie B., ed. 1917. The Little Book of Modern Verse

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917.

120. When I Have Gone Weird Ways

By John G. Neihardt


WHEN I have finished with this episode,
Left the hard, uphill road,
And gone weird ways to seek another load,
Oh, friends, regret me not, nor weep for me,
Child of Infinity!	5

Nor dig a grave, nor rear for me a tomb
To say with lying writ: “Here in the gloom
He who loved bigness takes a narrow room,
Content to pillow here his weary head,
For he is dead.”	10

But give my body to the funeral pyre,
And bid the laughing fire,
Eager and strong and swift, like my desire,
Scatter my subtle essence into space,
Free me of time and place.	15

And sweep the bitter ashes from the hearth,
Fling back the dust I borrowed from the earth
Into the chemic broil of death and birth,
The vast alembic of the cryptic scheme,
Warm with the master-dream.	20

And thus, O little house that sheltered me,
Dissolve again in wind and rain, to be
Part of the cosmic weird economy.
And, Oh, how oft with new life shalt thou lift
Out of the atom-drift!	25