With us. If I be sick

I know not, care not, and

The night is very thick;

My tract of toil is sand.

Hated the daily toil;

Hated the toil I loved;

Daily the worthless soil

Sinks back as it is moved.

II

I seized the hands of Grief;

I would not thus be thrown;

But Death came like a thief

Behind and seized my own

I held debate with Pain,

And half persuaded her;

Then came the utterance plain

Of Death, the Answerer.

‘Cryest thou so before

Thou sufferest?’ he said;

‘Wait yet a little more

And thou shalt cry indeed.’

Sorrow so darkly veiled

Will take my hand and lead.

O Wisdom, thou hast failed,

And Sorrow, she must lead;

And Death with her. He goes

Before and readeth plain

The painful list of those

Dear ones whom he hath slain.

They fail, they fall, they sink,

Torn from the treacherous sands;

The deeps of death they drink

And reach out madden’d hands.

A mist across the deep

Of future and of past,

The rock whereon we creep,

The present we hold fast,

Visible alone. Around,

The rolling wreathes of fog;

The unseen surges sound;

Dead eyes are in the fog.

We have no airy scope;

We are not things that fly;

We are but things that grope

From hand to hand and die.

Not many friends, O God,

Ours, and so far, so dear.

So far that less manhood,

Losing, can nobly bear

The loss, as, having, more

Must love. What bitter loss

To us so distant. For

No dying word to us;

No hand in ours; not even

To see the well-known spot,

The room, the chair is given;

To visit the sacred plot.

* * *

III

O Lily that to the lips

Pal’st at the name of death,

And with’rest in eclipse,

And yieldest a sickly breath:

And Rose that sheddest thy leaves

And tremblest as they fall,—

Know ye what power bereaves

And takes the sum of all?

Now slowly perishing

Down to the leafless core,

Ye die; no lovely thing;

A heart, and nothing more.

IV

If we could think that death

As surely as we dream,

To us who dwell beneath

The summit of supreme

Prospective—Love and Peace—

Will open Heav’nly sweets;

It would be wise to cease,

If ceasing thus completes;

Unless the further faith,

Malefiant power pursue

In death those who in death

Have hoped to struggle thro’.

V

The tropic night is husht

With hateful noises—hark!

The fluttering night-moth crusht

By reptiles in the dark

About the bed; the sound

Of tiny shrieks of pain;

Of midnight murders round;

Of creatures serpent-slain.

A moan of thunder fills

The stagnant air; and soon

A black cloud from the hills

Devours the helpless moon.

Those faces stampt in air

When all the hateful night

We toss, and cannot bear

The heated bed, and night

Is full of silent sounds

That walk about the bed

(The whining night-fly wounds

The ear; the air is dead;

The darkness madness; heat

A hell): appear and gaze;

Are silent; at the feet

Stand gazing; going gaze.