Classic Poem

Think you I know not what it is to die,
To have one's grave digged in the soulless clay,
To be shut up with silence? What if I
Breathe yet, the air, go forth still in the day,
Is there no death then but the body's death?
What of the soul's fond life, of hope and trust —
Wait these, then, think you for departing breath,
For helpless hands and hearts returned to dust?
I tell you nay — they die — for them we tread
In many a measured march, the world knows not
The gloom of some gray ground in which our dead.
Slain by the world's hard uses, sleep forgot.
They die, our trustful dreams of hope, they die!
Our trembling and reluctant hands alone
Must dig the quiet graves in which they lie
Beneath some hidden and ungraven stone.
They die, and we die with them; life is killed
In each aspiring hope the world has crushed,
With each flight-lifted wing the world has stilled,
Some needed note of melody is hushed —
The world! great God — the cloven-footed beast
Holds now the place where beauty was enthroned —
But let the whole world worship, I at least
Bring here no tribute — none — though it atoned
For all the sins that burden my sick soul —
Here in the fields still blest by man's neglect —
In rock and brier and clear stream's plaintive dole
I seek henceforth the beauty men reject.