IV.
“From the dead.”—You like the phrase not, wife; yet not from death he’s come,
But from life, of all the ages past the product and the sum.
Thine and mine,—yet neither mine nor thine, but heir of every hour,
Drawing through thee from the world’s breast,—we the stem and he the flower.
Ours, and yet not ours; the acorn from its parent will be broke,
Drop to earth, from earth to heaven stretch the fingers of the oak.
Acorn—oak, and back to acorn, hedging all the hills of time,
On and on forever, housing birds of every wing and clime.
Thus we die,—and thus we die not; mortal, yet immortal we;
Closely clasping crumbling fingers round the hand of the To Be;
Flingling out along the ages tendrils that will grip, and twine
In a slow attenuation down the long posterior line.