Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LIFE AND DEATH, by JAMES HERVEY HYSLOP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LIFE AND DEATH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We come into the noisy world
Last Line: The distant purposes of god.
Subject(s): Death; God; Life; Love; Peace; Dead, The


WE come into the noisy world
Without our choice and ignorant
Of all its sorrows and its sin:
But happy on our mother's breast,
We take its nourishment and feel
Its soft and pliant touch, and glow
With infant love, the keenest sense
Of pleasure and of helplessness.
The pangs of hunger and the joy
Of sating it are all we feel,
Not knowing then, in innocence,
Of hope or after fate of soul:
But sucklings feeling joy and pain;
No knowledge of their meaning now
Or purpose in the hands of God.

The tender mind in slumber waits
The day when consciousness awakes
And infancy begins to merge
Into the happy days of youth,
When growing freedom marks the joy
Of passion in our work or play.
No duties yet obtrude, restrain,
Or rob our lives of pleasure keen,
But cheerily we live ablaze
With liberty and wanton joy,
Until the call of manhood's age
And love doth give a sober touch
To wilding passions glowing there,
And turns them into happiness
The prize of life, of home and God.

And then, with sudden bound, comes death,
The reaper pale, whose ruthless blade
Now cuts the cords of love and life,
And leaves behind the withered leaves
Of fortune and of happiness.
The joys of life were in the place
Of hope and immortality:
No thought of bliss beyond the grave
Was wanted there, and heaven filled
The passing moments with its prize:
But when the pall of cruel death
Falls o'er the happy sunny days,
Men's bleeding hearts will wistful gaze
Into eternity for hope
And find therein the peace of God.

'Tis not for self we feel the glow
Of passion for continued life,
But love for those whose passage mars
The growth of soul and all its aims.
For death, in his remorseless path,
Leaves here no evidence for hope,
And we must seek its guerdon there
Where chance may bring a cheering word
From out the gates of grief and pain.
But when we bridge the sombre gulf
Twixt life and death, and learn that love
Still waits upon the shining shores
Of time and fate to meet us there,
We watch forever and forever
The distant purposes of God.





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