ANATOMY

By chance my fingers, resting on my face,
  Stayed suddenly where in its orbit shone
  The lamp of all things beautiful; then on,
Following more heedfully, did softly trace
Each arch and prominence and hollow place
  That shall revealed be when all else is gone—­
  Warmth, colour, roundness—­to oblivion,
And nothing left but darkness and disgrace.

Life like a moment passed seemed then to be;
  A transient dream this raiment that it wore;
While spelled my hand out its mortality
  Made certain all that had seemed doubt before: 
Proved—­O how vaguely, yet how lucidly!—­
  How much death does; and yet can do no more.

EVEN IN THE GRAVE

I laid my inventory at the hand
  Of Death, who in his gloomy arbour sate;
  And while he conned it, sweet and desolate
I heard Love singing in that quiet land. 
He read the record even to the end—­
  The heedless, livelong injuries of Fate,
  The burden of foe, the burden of love and hate;
The wounds of foe, the bitter wounds of friend: 

All, all, he read, ay, even the indifference,
  The vain talk, vainer silence, hope and dream. 
He questioned me:  “What seek’st thou then instead?”
  I bowed my face in the pale evening gleam. 
Then gazed he on me with strange innocence: 
“Even in the grave thou wilt have thyself,” he said.

BRIGHT LIFE

“Come now,” I said, “put off these webs of death,
  Distract this leaden yearning of thine eyes
  From lichened banks of peace, sad mysteries
Of dust fallen-in where passed the flitting breath: 
Turn thy sick thoughts from him that slumbereth
  In mouldered linen to the living skies,
  The sun’s bright-clouded principalities,
The salt deliciousness the sea-breeze hath!

“Lay thy warm hand on earth’s cold clods and think
  What exquisite greenness sprouts from these to grace
The moving fields of summer; on the brink
  Of arched waves the sea-horizon trace,
Whence wheels night’s galaxy; and in silence sink
  The pride in rapture of life’s dwelling-place!”

HUMANITY

“Ever exulting in thyself, on fire
  To flaunt the purple of the Universe,
  To strut and strut, and thy great part rehearse;
Ever the slave of every proud desire;
Come now a little down where sports thy sire;
  Choose thy small better from thy abounding worse;
  Prove thou thy lordship who hadst dust for nurse,
And for thy swaddling the primeval mire!”

Then stooped our Manhood nearer, deep and still,
  As from earth’s mountains an unvoyaged sea,
Hushed my faint voice in its great peace until
  It seemed but a bird’s cry in eternity;
And in its future loomed the undreamable,
  And in its past slept simple men like me.