A Child of the People :: :: University of Virginia Library

If my soul gain a glimpse of death
With seven days' journey still to run,
She shall not waste her lessening breath
With groanings for great deeds undone,
Nor cramp with palsies of the grave,
Nor, stupor-smitten, shrink, adread
Lest the lone silences which gave
Wait to reclaim their doubly dead;

Nor lavish, in a woman's mood,
Her tears for sweets slipped like a wind;
Nor holding death the greatest good,
And life a bane left best behind,
But glad to know the chance anigh
That all her days have dreamed of yet;
Half glad, half sad, to live or die,
And all to know, or all forget.

Her crystalled thoughts shall turn afar;—
“O soul, shall it be thus or thus?
At the white gateway of a star
Doth some white soul wave hands for us?
A little while, a little while,
And life shall drown in sea on sea!”
Then sun her sad heart with a smile,
Content, howe'er the issue be.

(Not all content; her thoughts sublime,
Borne in each flight on stronger wing
O'er the low-hanging skies of Time,
Found nowhere roof to anything.
What after shall content the soul?
Will she have heart for walls of clay?
Be glad to think her course and goal
Shut in the scantness of a day?)

Then, careless of the body's needs,
Nor heeding if it fast or faint,
Deaf to the wrangles of the creeds,
World-dead as any trancèd saint,
Her eyes, fast on the flawless white
O' the Soul of worlds, first blind for shame,
Shall afterward grow stars for sight,
And she the thin ghost of a flame.

Girt round in no sick bedchamber
With low lamps and laborious feet,
And muffled motions, noisier
Than honest hubbub of the street,
And drooping heads turned sharp awry
To hear the death-watch ticking slow,
Or sudden gust of wings go by;—
O soul, thou shalt not meet death so!

When all save one o' the hours have flown,
And round me puffs of sharp cold creep,
Thence, where his wings make nearing moan,
Like darkening storms, along the deep,
Then bear me to some frowning shore,
Where the sea hurls his heaving chain
On sheer crag-steeps, that evermore
Shatter the surges into rain;

And leave the litter with no word,
Nor wait the last sob of the shell.
Lone as on Nebo one, the Lord
Laid out of sight of Israel,
My soul shall stand on guard as stout,
And, ere the clouds draw close, slip past
And back, and ring death's secret out
Into the weary world at last!