  (A Digression.) When for us our eyes are closed in silent sleep, And over our rigid body is spread the sheet, While loved ones around us sob and weep. When in black our form is shrouded; And taken to some church all crowded, Our last rites to receive at loving hands, Who over our coffin wreathe their garlands Of flowers, whose fragrance perfume The air, while loving hearts with song attune, The stillness to break in hymns of hope; And the speaker in his talk to cope With human grief and doubts and fears, Says consoling words to dry up our tears. When in our grave, made with pick and spade, Our embalmed body is solemnly laid; Does that end us all and all our parade? Is that all of life to end in dust? From which our body came once robust? Or will there come some unseen power Our lost life to restore in some distant hour, By some loud trumpet blast us awake From deep sleep our slumber to break? Who pines the answer to know, May have to wait, or the knowledge forego. Science teaches that what of life we see, In man as in vegetation, shrub and tree, Are manifestations of acts the body performs. That mystic thing called “thought” man’s life adorns, Is but the throbbing of the active brain. That each lobe and part of the brain, Responds to particular senses we feel. One convolution smells, one hears, one sees; One urges locomotion, or brings us to our knees; As upon them play the subtle waves from without Receiving the response within of what we’re about. If all this be true, how can it be That when this machine is destroyed as we see, That these results can obtain thus set free. When the grey matter of the brain is back in dust, Into its original atoms rudely thrust. Unless it be that life itself is a thing apart, And the brain, nerves and throbbing heart, Are but the instruments through which it plays, And when this body in which it now stays, With all of its parts, is dead and gone, Another new body shall us adorn. They tell us such things in a book divine; And that this new body shall shine, Forever amid the stars and in glory shall walk, Around a throne and to the king shall talk; And that under the shade of the tree of life, Find eternal peace free from toil and strife. |
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