Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONNET: AT LAST, by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE


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SONNET: AT LAST, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In youth, when blood was warm and fancy high
Last Line: Smiled, -- heaven's high-priest of immortality!
Variant Title(s): The Mask Of Death
Subject(s): Easter; Holidays; The Resurrection


IN youth, when blood was warm and fancy high,
I mocked at death. How many a quaint conceit
I wove about his veiled head and feet.
Vaunting aloud. Why need we dread to die?
But now, enthralled by deep solemnity.
Death's pale phantasmal shade I darkly greet:
Ghostlike it haunts the hearth, it haunts the street,
Or drearier makes drear midnight's mystery.
Ah, soul-perplexing vision! oft I deem
That antique myth is true which pictured death
A masked and hideous form all shrank to see;
But at the last slow ebb of mortal breath,
Death, his mask melting like a night-mare dream,
Smiled, -- heaven's high-priest of Immortality!





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