Yet this we know: O'er whatso plains Or rocks or waterfalls it strains, At last the vast the stream attains; And I, and you.
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere; I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life-that in me has rest,
As I-undying life-have power in thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thine infinity; So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love The spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.
Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for death
Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou-THOU art Being and Breath, And what THOU art may never be destroyed.
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich dead; There's none of these so lonely and poor and old But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy; and the unhoped serene That men call age; and those who would have been Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow. They brought us for our dearth, Holiness lacked so long, and Love and Pain. Honor has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage; And nobleness walks in our ways again; And we have come into our heritage.
Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move, And half-men and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! We who have known shame, we have found release there
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending, Naught broken save this body, lost but breath; Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there But only agony, and that has ending; And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;- Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around— Earth and her waters, and the depths of air- Comes a still voice:-
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world-with kings, The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,-the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods-rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.-Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
When coldness wraps this suffering clay, Ah, whither strays the immortal mind?
It cannot die, it cannot stay,
But leaves its darkened dust behind. Then unembodied, doth it trace
By steps each planet's heavenly way? Or fill at once the realms of space A thing of eyes, that all survey?
Eternal, boundless, undecayed,
A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all, in earth or skies displayed, Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that memory holds So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the soul beholds, And all that was, at once appears.
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