FullReads

23.

Beyond the seas we know stretch seas unknown,
Blue and bright-colored for our dim and green;
Beyond the lands we see, stretch lands unseen
With many-tinted tangle overgrown;
And icebound seas there are like seas of stone,
Serenely stormless as death lies serene;
And lifeless tracks of sand, which intervene
Betwixt the lands where living flowers are blown.
This dead and living world befits our case
Who live and die: we live in wearied hope,
We die in hope not dead; we run a race
To-day, and find no present halting-place;
All things we see lie far within our scope,
And still we peer beyond with craving face.

24.

The wise do send their hearts before them to
Dear blessed Heaven, despite the veil between;
The foolish nurse their hearts within the screen
Of this familiar world, where all we do
Or have is old, for there is nothing new:
Yet elder far that world we have not seen;
God’s Presence antedates what else hath been:
Many the foolish seem, the wise seem few.
Oh foolishest fond folly of a heart
Divided, neither here nor there at rest!
That hankers after Heaven, but clings to earth;
That neither here nor there knows thorough mirth,
Half-choosing, wholly missing, the good part:–
Oh fool among the foolish, in thy quest.

25.

When we consider what this life we lead
Is not, and is; how full of toil and pain,
How blank of rest and of substantial gain,
Beset by hunger earth can never feed,
And propping half our hearts upon a reed;
We cease to mourn lost treasures mourned in vain,
Lost treasures we are fain and yet not fain
To fetch back for a solace of our need.
For who that feel this burden and this strain,
This wide vacuity of hope and heart,
Would bring their cherished well-beloved again:
To bleed with them and wince beneath the smart,
To have with stinted bliss such lavish bane,
To hold in lieu of all so poor a part?

26.

This Life is full of numbness and of balk,
Of haltingness and baffled short-coming,
Of promise unfulfilled, of everything
That is puffed vanity and empty talk:
Its very bud hangs cankered on the stalk,
Its very song-bird trails a broken wing,
Its very Spring is not indeed like Spring,
But sighs like Autumn round an aimless walk.
This Life we live is dead for all its breath;
Death’s self it is, set off on pilgrimage,
Travelling with tottering steps the first short stage:
The second stage is one mere desert dust
Where Death sits veiled amid creation’s rust:–
Unveil thy face, O Death who art not Death.

27.

I have dreamed of Death:–what will it be to die
Not in a dream, but in the literal truth
With all Death’s adjuncts ghastly and uncouth,
The pang that is the last and the last sigh?
Too dulled, it may be, for a last good-bye,
Too comfortless for any one to soothe,
A helpless charmless spectacle of ruth
Through long last hours, so long while yet they fly.
So long to those who hopeless in their fear
Watch the slow breath and look for what they dread:
While I supine, with ears that cease to hear,
With eyes that glaze, with heart-pulse running down,
(Alas! no saint rejoicing on her bed),
May miss the goal at last, may miss a crown.

28.

In life our absent friend is far away:
But death may bring our friend exceeding near,
Show him familiar faces long so dear
And lead him back in reach of words we say.
He only cannot utter yea or nay
In any voice accustomed to our ear;
He only cannot make his face appear
And turn the sun back on our shadowed day.
The dead may be around us, dear and dead;
The unforgotten dearest dead may be
Watching us, with unslumbering eyes and heart,
Brimful of words which cannot yet be said,
Brimful of knowledge they may not impart,
Brimful of love for you and love for me.