Thanking God for life and light,
Strength and joyous breath,
Should we not, with reverent lips,
Thank Him, too, for death?
When would man’s injustice cease,
Did not stern Death bring
Those who cheated and oppressed
To their reckoning?
Would not life’s long sordidness
On our spirits pall,
If our years should last forever,
And the earth were all?
On us, withered with life’s heat,
Falls death’s cooling dew,
And our parched souls’ dusty leaves
Their lost green renew.
Ah, though deep the grave-dust hide
Love and courage high,
Life a paltrier thing would be
If we could not die!
THE UNRETURNING
If our dead could come back to us,
Who so desire it,
And be as they were before,
Would we require it?
Would we bid them share again
Our weakness, foregoing
All their higher blessedness
Of being and knowing?
For them the triumph is won,
The fight completed;
Do we wish that the doubtful strife
Should be repeated?
Would we call them from the calm
Of all assurance
To the perils that might prove
Past their endurance?