LIVING OR DEAD
THEY are not dead to us, who keep
Their long, unvexed, reposeful sleep
’Neath grassy coverlets, flower-bespread:
For love abides though graves are deep,
And those who love are never dead.
They are not dead while heart to heart
Still hold communion though apart,
The visible with the unseen,
And faith and longing know the art
Of bridging the wide space between.
They are not dead who, folded fair
In the kind Shepherd’s steadfast care,
Await our coming in sure faith,
When we shall see them as they are,
Made yet more beautiful by death.
But they are dead whose love has grown
To be the ghost of love alone,
Who meet us with averted eyes,
And air constrained and altered tone,
And chill and alien courtesies.
They move, they accost us, and they seem
Like creatures of some weary dream;
So dead, so lost, so all-estranged,
The fire which cheered us with its gleam
Into the veriest ashes changed.
While if our dear and living dead,
With soft, still smiles and noiseless tread,
Should come, some day, to the old place,
There would not be a thought of dread
In their first rapture of embrace!
Oh, strangely blended joy and pain!
Death turned to naught, and life made vain,
Love’s shade and substance still at strife,
Who shall decide between the twain,
Or which is death, and which is life?