PART SECOND
Sleep, death and oblivion are things that mock;
Sleep in dreams; death and oblivion in the grave;
And yet we are not mocked. We only walk
Amid realities that bind us like a slave.
Sleep soothes and cheers; death grimly reaps and slays.
It makes earth but a tomb—its house of revelry;
It stalks amid life's dark and brightest ways
And takes its victims. All are 'neath its slavery.
With chilling frosts it nips life's brightest flowers,
And with pale faces and a gasp they go,
And vaguely trust to bloom 'neath other bowers,
Where death's grim hand will never blast them so.
All hearts beat to music and measure,
Like songs of the spheres as they roll,
And from dreamland's far mystical treasure
Come songbirds that sing to the soul;
Where the glint of the gold in fair tresses
Hide a face that we never have seen,
And the infinite hope that caresses
Kisses joys that we never may glean.
For the wealth of the world is ideal;
There is bliss in the beauty of rhyme,
And the thoughts of the soul are the real,
Outlasting the cycles of time.
And the soul is the diamond eternal
Where spirit and power are one,
Brushing dross from its splendor supernal
As dust from the eye of the sun.
All life is a poem of glory;
Neither reason nor senses can grasp,
Till we read every verse in the story,
And the hand of the author we clasp.
Then sing on sweet souls as of olden,
With visions of soul-land that shine,
Till the harp of the earthly is golden
From the hand of the Author Divine.