Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Irony

WHY are the things that have no death

The ones with neither sight nor breath!

Eternity is thrust upon

A bit of earth, a senseless stone.

A grain of dust, a casual clod

Receives the greatest gift of God.

A pebble in the roadway lies—

It never dies.

The grass our fathers cut away

Is growing on their graves to-day;

The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow

Eternally will come and go.

There is no kind of death to kill

The sands that lie so meek and still.…

But Man is great and strong and wise—

And so he dies.