Classic Poem

When the slow Hours the Hour Supreme have brought,
Then, of its mortal garments disarrayed,
Swift as a spark and subtle as a thought,
Flits from the clay the unencumbered shade
Unto the realm eternal, there to wait
Gazing in awe by its tremendous Gate.

That arch discrepant half on life's quicksand,
Half on the stable continent of Death
Is founded, yet doth ever firmly stand,
Daunting the phantom multitude beneath
That, refluent, cold, and bitter as a sea,
Eddies before it everlastingly.

For all is sightless gloom within the vast
Expansion, and abysmal void unknown,
And such vague horror o'er the chasm is cast
No man may dare to enter it alone,
Wherefore amid that multitude he roves,
Searching its legions for the soul he loves:—

One that shall say—Wherever thou dost go,
There go I also, if thou sufferest me,
Thy comrade, to each hap of joy or woe
Indifferent, be it only shared with thee.
Kiss but my lips and clasp in thine my hands,
And let us go where that dread portal stands.

And scarcely, 'tis affirmed, six steps or seven,
With equal feet and hearts that linkèd pair
Have made, when gloom is quenched by sudden Heaven
Flashed radiantly around them everywhere.
But he who seeks no Love and craves no mate
Watches for aye the unattempted gate.

Full many an erring child of want and sin,
Spurned by the proud and shunned by the correct,
Strong in sweet human love, hath entered in—
The Pharisees, I hear, do much object.
But how should Heaven the might of Love resist,
In whom, by whom, for whom alone it doth subsist?