| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXXIV. Compensation
From ‘Beautiful Death’ | | By Stephen Phillips (1868–1915) |
| | | WHY dreadest thou the calm process of death? | |
| To miss thy wife’s illuminating smile? | |
| No more to proudly touch thy child’s bright hair? | |
| To leave this glorying green, this flashing sun? | |
| Yet Death is full of leisure, and of light; | 5 |
| Of compensations and of huge amends. | |
| Since all the dead do for the living toil, | |
| Assisting, bathing, in the air, the earth; | |
| A shower their sympathy draws from the ground, | |
| Delicious kindness from the soil exhaled…. | 10 |
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| Blind shall I be and good, dumb and serene: | |
| I shall not blame, nor question; I shall shine | |
| Diffused and tolerant, luminous and large. | |
| No longer shall I vex, but live my life | |
| In solaces, caresses, and in balms, | 15 |
| Nocturnal soothings and nutritious sighs. | |
| The unhappy mind an odour shall be breathed; | |
| I shall be sagely blown, flung with design, | |
| Assist this bland and universal scheme, | |
| Industrious, happy, sweet, delicious, dead! | 20 | | | |
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