LIFE AND DEATH. (8) - Druckversion +- Sonett-Forum (https://sonett-archiv.com/forum) +-- Forum: Sonett-Archiv (https://sonett-archiv.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=126) +--- Forum: Sonette aus germanischen Sprachen (https://sonett-archiv.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=394) +---- Forum: Englische Sonette (https://sonett-archiv.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=818) +----- Forum: Autoren C (https://sonett-archiv.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=831) +------ Forum: Cranch, Christopher Pearse (https://sonett-archiv.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1108) +------ Thema: LIFE AND DEATH. (8) (/showthread.php?tid=16698) |
LIFE AND DEATH. (8) - ZaunköniG - 15.07.2007 1. O SOLEMN portal, veiled in mist and cloud, Where all who have lived throng in, an endless line, Forbid to tell by backward look or sign What destiny awaits the advancing crowd; Bourne crossed but once with no return allowed; Dumb, spectral gate, terrestrial yet divine, Beyond whose arch all powers and fates combine, Pledged to divulge no secrets of the shroud. Close, close behind we step, and strive to catch Some whisper in the dark, some glimmering light; Through circling whirls of thought intent to snatch A drifting hope — a faith that grows to sight; And yet assured, whatever may befall, That must be somehow best that comes to all. 2. OR endless sleep 't will be, — and that is rest, Freedom forever from life's weary cares — Or else a life beyond the climbing stairs And dizzy pinnacles of thought expressed In symbols such as in our mortal breast Are framed by time and space; — life that upbears The soul by a law untried amid these snares Of sense that make it a too willing guest. So sleep or waking were a boon divine. Yet why this inextinguishable thirst, This hope, this faith that to existence cling? Nay e'en the poor dark chrysalis some fine Ethereal creature prisons, till it burst Into the unknown, air on golden wing. 3. IF death be final, what is life, with all Its lavish promises, its thwarted aims, Its lost ideals, its dishonored claims, Its uncompleted growth? A prison wall, Whose heartless stones but echo back our call; An epitaph recording but our names; A puppet-stage where joys and griefs and shames Furnish a demon jester's carnival; A plan without a purpose or a form; A footless temple; an unfinished tale. And men like madrepores through calm and storm Toil, die to build a branch of fossil frail, And add from all their dreams, thoughts, acts, belief, A few more inches to a coral-reef. 4. IF at one door stands life to cheat our trust, And at another, death, to mock because We thought life's promise good; if all that was And is and should be ends in fume and dust — Then let us live for joy alone — the rust Of ease encase our minds — the grader laws Of souls be set aside. Let no man pause To weigh between his virtue and his lust. From first to last life baffles all our hopes Of aught but present bliss. Death waits to mock Our haste to indorse a visionary bond. Let pleasure dance us down earth's sunny slopes, And crown our heads with roses, ere the shock Of thunder falls. There is no life beyond? 5. YET in all facts of sense life stands revealed; And from a thousand symbols hope may take Its charter to escape the Stygian lake, And find existence in an ampler field. The streams by winter's icy breath congealed Flow when the voices of the spring awake. The electric current lives when tempests break The wires. The chemic energies unsealed By sudden change, in other forms survive. The senses cheat us where the mind corrects Their partial verdict. More than all, the heart — The heart cold science counts not, is alive — Of the undivided soul that vital part Her microscopic eye in vain dissects. 6. So, heralded by Reason, Faith may tread The darkened vale, the dolorous paths of night, In the great thought secure that life and light Flow from the Soul of all, who, with the dead As with the living, is the fountain-head. And though our loved and lost are snatched from sight, Some unseen power will guide them in their flight, And to some unknown home their steps are led. Yet has no seer, by sacred visions fired, Disclosed their state to those they leave behind; No holy prophet, saint or sage inspired — Save in the magic lantern of the mind — Seen in ecstatic trance those realms desired: And all the oracles are dumb and blind. 7. THE wish behind the thought is the soul's star Of faith, and out of earth we build our heaven. Life to each unschooled child of time has given A fairy wand with which he thinks to unbar The dark gate to a region vast and far, Where all is gained at length for which he has striven — All loss requited — all offences shriven — All toil o'erpassed — effaced each battle-scar. But ah! what heaven of rest could countervail The ever widening thought — the endless stress Of action whereinto the heart is born? What sphere so blessèd it could overbless With sweets the soul, when all such gifts must fail, If from its chosen work that soul were torn? 8. NOT for a rapture unalloyed I ask. Not for a recompense for all I miss. A banquet of the gods in heavenly bliss, A realm in whose warm sunshine I may bask, Life without discipline or earnest task Could ill repay the unfinished work of this. Nay — e'en to clasp some long-lost Beatrice In bowers of paradise — the mortal mask Dropped from her face now glorified and bright. But I would fain take up what here I left All crude and incomplete; would toil and strive To regain the power of which I am bereft By slow decay and death, with fuller light To aid the larger life that may survive. |