Within the hollowed hand of God,
Blood-red they lie, the dice of fate,
That have no time nor period,
And know no early and no late.
Postpone you can not, nor advance
Success or failure that's to be;
All fortune, being born of chance,
Is bastard-child to destiny.
Bow down your head, or hold it high,
Consent, defy—no smallest part
Of this you change, although the die
Was fashioned from your living heart.
Death
Through some strange sense of sight or touch
I find what all have found before,
The presence I have feared so much,
The unknown's immaterial door.
Point forward now or backward, light!
The way I take I may not choose:
Out of the night into the night,
And in the night no certain clews.
But on the future, dim and vast,
And dark with dust and sacrifice,
Death's towering ruin from the past
Makes black the land that round me lies.
The
Soul
An heritage of hopes and fears
And dreams and memory,
And vices of ten thousand years
God gives to thee.