| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | VI. The Grave’s Triumph
At an Unmarked Mound | | By Alexander Macphail (1870–1949) |
| | | DUST unto dust? Nay, shallow laid, she stirs, | |
| I guess, when springtime and the streamlets call, | |
| Even though, the while, her ever-thickening pall | |
| Is wrought by the deft needles of the firs. | |
| Ashes to ashes: still, I fancy hers | 5 |
| Must glow if any human breath at all | |
| Shall breathe upon them, though the winter fall | |
| A fathom deep, and doubly sure inters. | |
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| Faint as she whinnies in this studied rhyme, | |
| Yet if a human child but shed a tear | 10 |
| For her, she rises, answering tears with mirth, | |
| To roam through pastures green the livelong year; | |
| So she lives on, till, in a little time, | |
| All living turns to earth: earth unto earth. | | | | |
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