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The Dead to the Living
Work while it is day : the night cometh, when no man can work
- IN the childhood of April, while purple woods
- With the young year’s blood in them smiled,
- I passed through the lanes and the wakened fields,
- And stood by the grave of the child.
- And the pain awoke that is never dead
- Though it sometimes sleeps, and again
- It set its teeth in this heart of mine,
- And fastened its claws in my brain:
- It was hard and hard that the little hands
- And the little well‐loved head
- Should be out of reach of our living lips,
- And be side by side with the dead.
- For with trees about where the brown birds build,
- And with long green grass above,
- She lies in the cold sweet breast of earth
- Beyond the reach of our love;
- Whatever befalls in the coarse loud world,
- We know she will never wake.
- When I thought of the sorrow she might have known,
- I was almost glad for her sake. . . .
- Tears might have tired those kiss‐closed eyes,
- Grief hardened the mouth I kissed;
- I was almost glad that my dear was dead
- Because of the pain she had missed.
- Oh, if I could but have died a child
- With a white child‐soul like hers,
- As pure as the wind‐flowers down in the copse,
- Where the soul of the springtime stirs;
- Or if I had only done with it all,
- And might lie by her side unmoved!
- I envied the very clods of earth
- Their place near the child I loved.
- And my soul rose up in revolt at life,
- As I stood dry‐eyed by her grave,
- When sudden the grass of the churchyard sod
- Rolled back like a green smooth wave;
- The brown earth looked like the brown sea rocks,
- The tombstones were white like spray,
- And white like surf were the curling folds
- Of the shrouds where the dead men lay;
- For each in his place with his quiet face
- I saw the dead lie low,
- Who had worked and suffered and found life sad,
- So many sad years ago.
- Unchanged by time I saw them lie
- As when first they were laid to rest,
- The tired eyes closed, the sad lips still,
- And the work‐worn hands on the breast.
- There were some who had found the green world so grey,
- They had left it before their time,
- And some were little ones like my dear,
- And some had died in their prime;
- And some were old, they had had their fill
- Of bitter unfruitful hours;
- And I knew that none of them, none, had known
- A flower of a hope like ours!
- Through their shut eyelids the dead looked up,
- And without a voice they said:
- ‘We lived without hope, without hope we died,
- And hopeless we lie here dead;
- And death is better than life that draws
- Pain in, as it draws in breath,
- If life never dreams of a coming day
- When life shall not envy death.
- Through the dark of our hours and our times we lived,
- Uncheered by a single ray
- Of such hope as lightens the lives of you
- Who are finding life hard to‐day;
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- With our little lanterns of human love
- We lighted our dark warm night—
- But you in the chill of the dawn are set
- With your face to the eastern light.
- Freedom is waiting with hands held out
- Till you tear the veil from her face—
- And when once men have seen the light of her eyes,
- And felt her divine embrace
- The light of the world will be risen indeed,
- And will shine in the eyes of men,
- And those who come after will find life fair,
- And their lives worth living then!
- Will you strive to the light in your loud rough world,
- That these things may come to pass,
- Or lie in the shadow beside the child,
- And strive to the sun through the grass?’
- ‘My world while I may, ’I cried; ‘but you
- Whose lives were as dark as your grave?’
- ‘We too are a part of the coming light,’
- They called through the smooth green wave.
- Their white shrouds gleamed as the flood of green
- Rolled over and hid them from me—
- Hid all but the little hands and the hair,
- And the eyes that I always see.
1886.
