| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | III. Oblivion
Death | | By Archibald Lampman (1861–1899) |
| | | I LIKE to stretch full-length upon my bed, | |
| Sometimes, when I am weary body and mind, | |
| And think that I shall some day lie thus, blind | |
| And cold, and motionless, my last word said. | |
| How grim it were, how piteous to be dead! | 5 |
| And yet how sweet, to hear no more, nor see, | |
| Sleeping, past care, through all eternity, | |
| With clay for pillow to the clay-cold head. | |
| And I should seem so absent, so serene: | |
| They who should see me in that hour would ask | 10 |
| What spirit, or what fire, could ever have been | |
| Within that yellow and discoloured mask; | |
| For there seems life in lead, or in a stone, | |
| But in a soul’s deserted dwelling none. | | | | |
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