Classic Poem

Why should we cling to those that die?
Why fondly mark and haunt the place
Where a dear brother's ashes lie,
Amid the relics of his race?

Why weep above the inclosing sod
Where the loved form was laid away,
As if the spirit sent from God
Still dwelt within the mouldering clay?

Years, as they pass, shall scatter wide
That dust by narrow walls confined,
Wherever ocean sends his tide,
Or earth is swept by winnowing wind.

These trees, the harvests on these plains,
The air we breathe, the dust we tread,
The tide of life that fills these veins,
Are portions of the buried dead.

Hath God, then, doomed, when life is o'er,
The soul to slumber in the tomb,
While yet the form, the limbs it wore,
Are on the earth in life and bloom?

The mind, far reaching into space,
Gauges the bulk of distant spheres—
Finds out each planet's course and place,
And measures all their days and years.

But who beyond that bourne hath gazed,
At which our mortal senses fail,
Into the spirit world, or raised
'Twixt life and death the parting veil?

The deepest search of human thought,
The furthest stretch of human eye.
No tidings from the soul have brought,
Beyond the moment when we die.

With trembling hope I wait the change,
When thought and sight, unclogged by sin,
Through God's vast universe shall range,
And take the world of spirits in.

Ours be meanwhile the cheerful creed,
That leaves the spirit free to roam,
By mount and river, wood and mead,
'Till Heaven's kind voice shall call it home.