Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/181

175 The sun not in their faces,—shall abstract No more our strength: we will not be discrowned Through treasuring their crowns, nor deign transact A barter of the present, in a sound, For what was counted good in foregone days. O Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us With your stiff hands of desiccating praise, And hold us backward by the garment thus, To stay and laud you in long virelays! Still, no! we will not be oblivious Of our own lives, because ye lived before, Nor of our acts, because ye acted well,— We thank you that ye first unlatched the door— We will not make it inaccessible By thankings in the doorway any more, But will go onward to extinguish hell With our fresh souls, our younger hope, and God's Maturity of purpose. Soon shall we Be the dead too! and, that our periods Of life may round themselves to memory, As smoothly as on our graves the funeral sods, We must look to it to excel as ye, And bear our age as far, unlimited By the last sea-mark! so, to be invoked By future generations, as the Dead.

'Tis true that when the dust of death has choked A great man's voice, the common words he said Turn oracles,—the meanings which he yoked Like horses, draw like griffins!—this is true And acceptable. Also I desire,