ON DEATH

[For the date of composition see Editor's Note. Published with Alastor, 1816.]

There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.—Ecclesiastes.

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                                       5
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,⁠                               10
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                                  ⁠15
⁠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,⁠                                    20
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?                                     ⁠25
⁠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?⁠                      30