The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens.
He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse’s neck.

Keys turning
rattling in the loose locks
  opening high the doors
that close again
like death-hours coming faster

the walls are white
and the line of beds is staring
all the bars go up and down
and none of them lead outward

and leaping eyes
    and stiff limbs
follow the crunch of the keys

I am powerful now
and I will break those that carry the keys
      with little hammers
small hammers
    which you will make for me

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL, DIED FEBRUARY 27, 1887

I held his letter in my hand,
And even while I read
The lightning flashed across the land
The word that he was dead.

How strange it seemed! His living voice
Was speaking from the page
Those courteous phrases, tersely choice,
Light-hearted, witty, sage.

I wondered what it was that died!
The man himself was here,
His modesty, his scholar's pride,
His soul serene and clear.

These neither death nor time shall dim,
Still this sad thing must be--

Saint Laura, in her sleep of death,
Preserves beneath the tomb
---'Tis willed where what is willed must be---
In incorruptibility
Her beauty and her bloom.

So pure her maiden life had been,
So free from earthly stain,
'Twas fixed in fate by Heaven's own Queen,
That till the earth's last closing scene
She should unchanged remain.

Within a deep sarcophagus
Of alabaster sheen,
With sculptured lid of roses white,
She slumbered in unbroken night
By mortal eyes unseen.

Above her marble couch was reared

St. Austin, going in thought
Along the sea-sands gray,
Into another world was caught,
And Carthage far away.

He saw the City of God
Hang in the saffron sky;
And this was holy ground he trod,
Where mortals come not nigh.

He saw pale spires aglow,
Houses of heavenly sheen;
All in a world of rose and snow,
A sea of gold and green.

There amid Paradise
The saint was rapt away
From unillumined sands and skies
And floor of muddy clay.

His soul took wings and flew,
Forgetting mortal stain,

I am the one who loved her as my life,
Had watched her grow to sweet young womanhood;
Won the dear privilege to call her wife,
And found the world, because of her, was good.
I am the one who heard the spirit voice,
Of which the paleface settlers love to tell;
From whose strange story they have made their choice
Of naming this fair valley the "Qu'Appelle."

She had said fondly in my eager ear--
"When Indian summer smiles with dusky lip,
Come to the lakes, I will be first to hear
The welcome music of thy paddle dip.

Of Brutus' blood, in Brittaine borne,
King Arthur I am to name;
Through Christendome and Heathynesse
Well knowne is my worthy fame.

In Jesus Christ I doe beleeve;
I am a Christyan bore;
The Father, Sone, and Holy Gost,
One God, I doe adore.

In the four hundred ninetieth yeere,
Oer Brittaine I did rayne,
After my Savior Christ his byrth,
What time I did maintaine

The fellowshipp of the Table Round,
Soe famous in those dayes;
Whereatt a hundred noble knights
And thirty sat alwayes:

When in death I shall calmly recline,
O bear my heart to my mistress dear,
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue, while it linger'd here.
Bid her not shed one tear of sorrow
To sully a heart so brilliant and light;
But balmy drops of the red grape borrow,
To bathe the relic from morn till night.

When the light of my song is o'er,
Then take my harp to your ancient hall;
Hang it up at that friendly door,
Where weary travellers love to call.
Then if some bard, who roams forsaken,

Having an aged hate of height
I forced myself to climb the Tower,
Yet paused at every second flight
Because my heart is scant of power;
Then when I gained the sloping summit
Earthward I stared, straight as a plummet.

When like a phantom by my side
I saw a man cadaverous;
At first I fancied him a guide,
For dimly he addressed me thus:
"Sir, where you stand, Oh long ago!
There also stood Galilleo.

"Proud Master of a mighty mind,
he worshipped truth and knew not fear;
Aye, though in age his eyes were blind,