Classic Poem

When a tree falls
A tree only dies only.
When a rock crumbles
Rock only dies not only.
When a man dies
Man dies:
It is death indeed.
No further the change
From sea or tree
To rock or man
Who changes all to man
But may not man change
Without death indeed.
For later than himself
Comes God which is not
Save as death tarries
Or as woman pities.
Think you this strange?
But think you not woman strange,
And strange as death indeed,
Stranger than God-you?

But to change to flies —
They which so prettily annoy
And with subdued regret
See themselves scarcely killed,
Scarcely alive, scarcely dead.
Or of moths, how if turned outdoors
Next morning with goodbye,
A gratitude beyond their will
Humanizes the unasked release,
And an emotion reels away.
Such insincere hysterias
Or terrorless philosophies
Show nature's suave proficiency in man.
Have you not seen the swallows
By the sea flash themselves
High and down more knowingly
Than even the hyperbolic air
Can render bird-veritable?

But suppose in that same sea
A man turns human-hearted
And — as an angel walking earth
In heavenly difference from once mortal gait
Might in a sudden doubt of self
Be man and instantly a corpse
Inhuman, nature's meanest same —
Dives into languid foretime
To be connatural with fish:
That's drowning, and a fish
A better man, gliding like man
Manwards, and with mournful fins,
Lest uncommemorated pass
The near-strange funerals of flies.