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

Must glow if any human breath at all

Shall breathe upon them, though the winter fall

A fathom deep, and doubly sure inters.

Faint as she whinnies in this studied rhyme,

Yet if a human child but shed a tear

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.