| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | Knowledge after Death | | By Henry Charles Beeching (1859–1919) |
| | | SICCINE separat amara mors? | |
| Is death so bitter? Can it shut us fast | |
| Off from ourselves, that future from this past, | |
| When time compels us through those narrow doors? | |
| Must we supplanted by ourselves in the course, | 5 |
| Changelings, become as they who know at last | |
| A river’s secret, never having cast | |
| One guess, or known one doubt, about its source? | |
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| Is it so bitter? Does not knowledge here | |
| Forget her gradual growth, and how each day | 10 |
| Seals up the sum of each world-conscious soul? | |
| So tho’ our ghosts forget us, waste no tear; | |
| We, being ourselves, would gladly be as they, | |
| And we, being they, are still ourselves made whole. | | | | |
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