LIFE AND DEATH.
I.—LIFE.
Suffering! and yet majestical in pain;
Mysterious! yet, like spring-showers in the sun,
Veiling the light with their melodious rain,
Life is a warp of gloom and glory spun;
Its darkling phases are as clouds that mourn
Beneath the loftier splendors of an arch
Where deathless orbs in golden daylight burn,
And God's great pulses beat their music march.
The heaven we worship dimly girt with tears,
The spirit-heaven, what is it but a life,
Lifting its soul beyond our mortal years
That oft begin, and ever end with strife:
Strife we must pass to win a happier height,
Nature but travails to reveal us—light.
II.—DEATH.
Then whence, O Death! thy dreariness? We know
That every flower the breeze's flattering breath
Wooes to a blush, and love-like murmuring low,
Dies but to multiply its bloom in death:
The rill's glad, prattling infancy, that fills
The woodlands with its song of innocent glee,
Is passing through the heart of shadowy hills,
To swell the eternal manhood of the sea;
And the great stars, Creation's minstrelfires
Are rolling toward the central source of light,
Where all their separate glory but expires
To merge into one world's unbroken might;
There is no death but change, soul claspeth soul,
And all are portion of the immortal whole.
