 | The Poetical Works of Caroline Bowles Southey |  |
Is it perchance, as darkness draweth nigh—
Type of the grave, where soon we all shall lie—
And sleep, the type of death, comes stealing on,
When, all our strength and all our cunning gone,
The strongest sinews and the wisest head
Shall lie alike defenceless as the dead?—
Is it that then, by some mysterious cause,
Man toward man in closer union draws?—
That then, perhaps, as in the dying hour,
Distinctions fade of rank, and wealth, and power,
And human hearts instinctively confess
The mutual bond of mutual helplessness,
Mutual dependence—ay, of great and small—
On One—the God and Father of us all?
Type of the grave, where soon we all shall lie—
And sleep, the type of death, comes stealing on,
When, all our strength and all our cunning gone,
The strongest sinews and the wisest head
Shall lie alike defenceless as the dead?—
Is it that then, by some mysterious cause,
Man toward man in closer union draws?—
266
Distinctions fade of rank, and wealth, and power,
And human hearts instinctively confess
The mutual bond of mutual helplessness,
Mutual dependence—ay, of great and small—
On One—the God and Father of us all?
| The Poetical Works of Caroline Bowles Southey | |