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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Annie Matheson (1853–1924)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Selected Poems (1900). VI. Death and Life

Annie Matheson (1853–1924)

O DEATH! when all my tasks are done,

And Life has yielded up

The hidden joys that, one by one,

Make sweet his bitter cup,

Then only, at the set of sun,

Come thou with me to sup.

Thou art but Life in brief disguise,

And, ere we sup, wilt lay

Thy domino of sombre dyes

Within my tomb away,

Then flash on my delighted eyes

As Life, in Life’s array.

That night put no new jewels on

But wear thy time-worn dress,

No kindlier garment canst thou don,

Nor shall I love thee less—

The hurried air will then be gone

That mars thy loveliness:

Despite the mystery and pain

That blend with love and bliss,

For life hereafter we are fain,

Not wholly unlike this,—

But life more vital, to regain

What we, through weakness, miss.

O Death! I called thee once a friend

Of whom I had no fear:

(Stern Life, on me his brows would bend,

Nor seemed his bidding clear),—

But when I saw thee hither wend,

I knew that Life was dear.

When nearer drew the shrouded face,

(Day’s work unfinished still),

A terror shadowed all the place,

A prayer possessed my will;

“A little longer grant me grace

While I my day fulfil!”

I heard a hand unlatch my door,

More solemn grew my dread;

No death-like phantom crossed my floor,

But Life himself instead,

His mocking smile, unseen before,

With shamefast eyes I read.

He smiled: “I did but masquerade

A moment in thy sight,

And wast thou then so sore afraid

Of thy friend, Death, to-night?—

Go, finish what thy labour made,

Nor waste the waning light.”

And He at last in Whom I trust,

When death does frown on me,

Will throw the mask into the dust

That I true Life may see,

His garb of joy from moth and rust

Eternally set free.

Familiar Life, but fairer far

Than shone his earthly grace,

Which care and grief and hurry mar

And bonds of time and space;

Life always where earth’s loved ones are,

Before Love’s unveiled face.