Classic Poem

You doubt. And yet, O you who walk your ways
Glad of your very breath!
Look back along the days:
Have you not tasted death?

What of the hour of anguish, over-past,
So fierce, so lone,
That even now the Soul looks back aghast
At sorrow of its own:
The piercèd hands and stark,—
The eyes gone dark?
You who have known
And trodden down the fangs of such defeat,
Did you not feel some veil of flesh sore rent,—
Then, wonderment?
Did you not find it sweet
To live, still live,—to see, to breathe again,
Victorious over pain?
Did you not feel once more, as darkness went,
Upon your forehead, cold with mortal dew,
The daybreak new?
And far and new, some eastern breath of air
From that rapt Garden where
The lilies stood new-risen, fragranter
Than myrrh?

‘Death, Death, was this thy sting—
This bitter thing?
Can it be past?
Only I know there was one agony,
One strait way to pass by,
A stress that could not last.
And in such conflict, something had to die …
It was not I.’