Classic Poem

How strange it must be without any pain,
To lie upon the bed of death;
As the last pulses thrill each languid vein,
And the lip trembles yet with breath:

Whilst the clear spirit, all unchanged within,
Looks back along life's eddying stream,
And feels reality at length begin,
After a long and fevered dream.

That scene made up of darkness, and of light,
The irrecoverable past,
Like a great picture lies before our sight,
Seen all at once from first to last.

Its hopes, its passions, its events, we see,
Its acts of hate, and fear, and love,
Just as the gate of immortality
Turns onits golden hinge above.

Some think of time alone, to others life
Is the porch of eternity:
In that last hour of inward calm, or strife,
How awful must the difference be!