On Death - From Shelley
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light.
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.
O man! Hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way.
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.
This world is the nurse of all we know
This world is the mother of all we feel
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
The secret things of the grave are there
Where all but this frame must surely be
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be with the fears and the love for that which we see?
1815
