Impressions: A Book of Verse/life and death
LIFE AND DEATH
Phrixine. Τίς δ' οἶδεν, εἰ ζην τοῦθ', οἳ κέκληται θανεῖν,
Τὸ ζῆν δὲ θνήσκειν ἐστι;
Euripides, frag,
OH ye who see with other eyes than ours,
And speak with tongues we are too deaf to hear,
Whose touch we cannot feel yet know ye near
When with a sense of yet undreamed-of powers
We sudden pierce the cloud of sense that lowers
Enwrapping us as 't were our spirit's tomb,
And catch some sudden glory through the gloom
As Arctic sufferers dream of sun and flowers!
Do ye not sometimes long for power to speak
To our dull ears and pierce their shroud of clay
With a loud-thought cry: "Why this grief at 'Death'?
We are the living you the dead to-day!
This truth you soon shall see, dear hearts, yet weak,
In God's bright mirror cleared from mortal breath!"