Fourteen sonnets and poems/Compensation
My own dim life should teach me this,
That life should live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is.
Compensation
OF all I would, the little I can know
Rejoiced I am, for of that I am sure.
Life's secret found, there's also found the cure
For needless fear, lest Death his dart should throw
'Gainst score of youth, consort with wasting age,
The same blot out as if it had not been;
Save from myself there be to try again.
I nothing am, a vanished, fruitless page,
Yet this I know, beyond the power of speech,
That human life to be partakes of God;
And what would end me in a sparkless clod
With equal force might his non-being teach.
Thus stand I firm, contented, safe, secure;
Knowing, whereby I live, the heavens endure.