Classic Poem

Wielding the tools of being great,
Man strains to build.
And when his hands are stilled,
Do there await
Yet higher towers to try his skill again?
—A workman with still nobler fellow-men?
Is this what he shall be, or rotting ground
No more a part of color, motion, sound?

Man's swift mind swings the world around!
But like the puny flower,
Each in his hour,
Man must be buried in the ground
And from his own decay
Rise to new day;

He must be prisoned in the earth
Of grief, and after pain, find birth
Again in glory and in mirth.
Then, truer still, may he be one
With light and sun.
But there are graves where man must go
Slain by remorse and for a while
Must hide from life, till he shall know
That after pain, in God's own smile
He shall arise, his soul
Joyous and whole.
So with small griefs that slay,
So with the little deaths of every day,
And so with that old death we fear and dread.
But why, then, should we fear? The dead
Who take their place beneath the sod
Are only on their way to God.