Classic Poem

O my dead comrade—my great dead!
I sat by your bedside—it was the close of day—
I heard the drip of the rain on the roof of the house:
The light shadowed—departing, departing—
You also departing, departing—
You and the light, companions in life, now, too, companions in death,
Retiring to the shadow, carrying elsewhere the benediction of your sunbeams
I sat by your bedside, I held your hand:
Once you opened your eyes: O look of recognition! O look of bestowal!
From you to me then passed the commission of the future,
From you to me that minute, from your veins to mine,
Out of the flood of passage, as you slipped away with the tide,
From your hand that touched mine, from your soul that touched mine, near, O so near—
Filling the heavens with stars—
Entered, shone upon me and out of me, the power of the spring, the seed of the rose and the wheat,
As of father to son, as of brother to brother, as of god to god!
O my great dead!
You had not gone, you had stayed—in my heart, in my veins,
Reaching through me, through others through me, through all at last, our brothers,
A hand to the future.