1427. Life and Death by Lilla Cabot Perry. Stedman, Edmund Clarence, ed. 1900. An American Anthology, 1787-1900

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

1427. Life and Death

By Lilla Cabot Perry


O YE who see with other eyes than ours,
And speak with tongues we are too deaf to hear,
Whose touch we cannot feel yet know ye near,
When, with a sense of yet undreamed-of powers,
We sudden pierce the cloud of sense that lowers,	5
Enwrapping us as ’t were our spirit’s tomb,
And catch some sudden glory through the gloom,
As Arctic sufferers dream of sun and flowers!
Do ye not sometimes long for power to speak
To our dull ears, and pierce their should of clay	10
With a loud cry, “Why, then, this grief at ‘death’?
We are the living, you the dead to-day!
This truth you soon shall see, dear hearts, yet weak,
In God’s bright mirror cleared from mortal breath!”