HOPE'S ARGUMENT.
We give ourselves much trouble lest to die
Should be to lose this conscious life and pass
Impersonally into earth and sky—
Lost in the general mass.
And yet it is our deepest ecstasy
To pass through love into another's life—
To yield this rooted self all up, and be
All husband or all wife.
And deeper still the joy of a rapt soul,
Whose self is sunk in earth, dead as the sod,
Whose will has passed into divine control,
And being into God.
If thus to lose self be ecstatic gain,
Wherefore this trouble for the loss of breath?
Ay, ay, but will the ecstasy remain
An ecstasy in death?
So leans the argument; the more we die
To the restraining earth, the more we rise
Into the rapt beatitudes that lie
Hidden to mortal eyes.
At last death is the severing of all
Entanglement or tie that binds to earth—
The cutting of the cord umbilical
That frees the higher birth.
