Classic Poem

I.

We shall not lonely be:
The breakers of death's sea
Fringe with their white line no inhuman shore
Within death's valleys meet
The faces we found sweet,
The hearts and hands that sought our own of yore
Upon death's uplands, lo!
Full many a voice we know
And flowers like those our living green earth bore.

II.

All, young and old, are there;
The child with golden hair,
The blue-eyed girl, the man with earnest look
Death's is no lonely land,
No waste of desert sand,
But glad with silvery laugh of many a brook,
And bright with suns like those
That in the old days rose,
And moonlight floods each ghostly forest-nook.

III.

We need not doubt nor dread:
The armies of the dead
Beckon us on with many a living hand.
The lonelier we are here
The less we have to fear
For on the other side more dear ones stand:
Each summer sends its ghosts
Of flowers to death's dim coasts;
Each year new loved ones seek that unseen land