Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/210

182 On, on the ceaseless music sings,

Restless, intense, serene;—

Life is the downward stroke; the upward, Life;

Death but the pause between.

II

Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,

Ah, who could face the abyss

That plunges steep athwart each human breath?

If the new birth of Death

Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,

What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,

Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?

All, all were vain!

If, having soared pure spirit at the last,

Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh,

We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;

Are caught again in closer-woven mesh—

Ah! who would care to die

From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky;

These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?

III

Again the Answerer saith:

O ye of little faith,

Shall, then, the spirit prove craven,

And Death's divine deliverance but give

A summer rest and haven?

By all most noble in us, by the light that streams

Into our waking dreams,

Ah, we who know what Life is, let us live!

Clearer and freer, who shall doubt?

Something of dust and darkness cast forever out;