University of Virginia Library


236

VI. DEATH.

Since, small or great, and every man on earth,
Must know thee at the last, thy lonely gloom
Is bright with something of diviner birth—
The lamp of human love, that o'er our doom
Sheds undivided radiance. For in this
Our modern world of finely graded life,
The soul is nursed knowing nothing of the bliss
Of sorrow borne, since human. In this strife
Of complex individual interests
Poor man and princely, side by side, share not
One pain or passion of a common lot,
Till death, more liberal than life, invests
All men alike in his wide winding-sheet,
And in that suit of sorrow makes them meet.