“Now I absorb immortality and peace, I admire death....
O, I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.”
In one poem he speaks of “awaiting death with perfect equanimity,” and in another says:
“Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide at last of all,
Rich, florid loosener of the stricture knot call’d life,
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.”
And the reason for all this restfulness as to Death and the Future is expressed in his Assurances:
“I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for. (Did you think life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all life, is not well provided for?)
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points.
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere, at any time, is provided for in the inherences of things.
I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.”
So, reader, I care not how it comes into your soul, so that you have it there, a rich and precious possession, this living, active, potential belief in immortality. If you know you are now, and that you will never end, you will find that life itself becomes more enlarged and dignified. You will not be content with mere earthly aims, you will not rest satisfied to be a mere money-getter, but, realizing the immensity of your own capacities and powers, you will reach out for the eternal things, the realities that abide forever. For Joaquin Miller never wrote a truer word than when he said:
“For all you can hold in your dead cold hand,
Is what you have given away.”