DEATH’S DOOM
Thou hast no sting,
Terror none,
O doomed Death;
My whole duty done,
I shall welcome thee.
To the vigilant and victorious,
Thou bringest the better,
Quite unwittingly,
The higher, and yet
The highest.
Thou art the open gate
To Life,
Thou rapacious mocker,
Thy dark, grim visage
Is transformed into a beacon of light,
Balmy, buoyant, beautiful.
A new glory has the sun
At his setting,
Giving yet greater beauty to his resplendent light,
For myriads of admiring men,
For sated beasts and singing birds at eventide.
Life-kisses are cast upward
To receiving and ever grateful stars and starlets,
Beneficiaries afar,
In their cosmic course.
All these and more perpetually pass on,
In holy and soft-toned harmonies,
The life-filled fruitage of conquered Death.
Angels, beyond thy touch,
Sing and dance,
On their winged way,
As ministers of Jehovah,
Bringing to the so-called dead
A chalice of new life.
And perfected souls and saints,
Giving forth with joy their divinest ministrations,
Are co-workers with the Highest,
For the varied glory and ever increasing fullness
Of eternal life.
Thou art a misnomer,
O arch Deceiver!
The last lie thou art,
To be bravely faced, denied, disproved.
The serene,
The trustful,
The Christ ones,
Planting their feet
Upon thy bosom,
All shadowy and unreal,
Will proclaim
The paeans of life,
Their holiest halleluiahs.
Hence—my duty done—
O darkest Death,
Come thou for me.
Oft have I banished thee,
Having come unawares;
Thou didst flee,
Thou cunning coward,
To come again,
Noiselessly by night;
For somber Night is thy craven consort,
As unreal as thyself,
As non-existent—
Driven easily away,
By thy King’s coming.
The foulest negation thou,
Of all the ages,
Yet universal.
Life’s cessation?
Life’s full possession!
Both false and elusive,
Thou art unknown,
To shallow souls,
And unknowable;
Dreadful, powerful
Till met and vanquished whole;
When lo!
Life, the Prince of Life,
Holds me fast for aye,
And Death is no more—
For me, no more.