Poems (Blake)/Dead

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For works with similar titles, see Dead.
4568516Poems — DeadMary Elizabeth Blake
DEAD!
    Dead! That is the word
That rings through my brain till it crazes!
  Dead; while the Mayflowers bud and blow,
  While the green creeps over the white of the snow,
While the wild woods ring with the song of the bird,
And the fields are a-bloom with daisies!

    See! Even the clod
Thrills, with life's glad passion shaken;
  The vagabond weeds with their vagrant train
  Laugh in the sun and nod in the rain,
The blue sky smiles like the eye of God,—
Only my dead do not waken!

    Dead!⁁There is the word
That I sit in the darkness and ponder!
  Why should the river, the sky, and the sea
  Babble of summer and joy to me,
While a strong true heart with its pulse unstirred
Lies hushed in the silence yonder?

    Lord! Lord! How long
Ere we rise to Thy heights supernal
  Ere the soul may read what Thy spirit saith;
  "Life that must fade, is not life but death.
Lift up thine eyes O soul! Be strong;
For Death is the Life Eternal!"