| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXIX. The Happy Dead
A. S. P. | | By Stephen Phillips (1868–1915) |
| | | FRAIL was she born; petal by petal fell | |
| Her life: till it was strown upon the herb; | |
| Like petals all her fancies lay about. | |
| And the dread Powers kept her face toward grief, | |
| Although she swerved; and still with many a lash | 5 |
| Guided her to the anguish carefully. | |
| So bare her soul that Beauty like a lance | |
| Pierced her, and odour full of arrows was. | |
| She drugged her brain against realities, | |
| And lived in dreams, and was with music fed, | 10 |
| Imploring to be spared e’en sweetest things. | |
| She suffered, and resorted to the ground, | |
| Glad to be blind, and eager to be deaf; | |
| Soliciting eternal apathy. | |
| And she was swift to steep her brain in moss, | 15 |
| And with the heart that so had loved, to blow | |
| Merely, and to be idle in the wind. | |
| She craved no Paradise but only peace. | | | | |
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