Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IMMORTALITY, by WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IMMORTALITY, by                    
First Line: I live: this much I know; and I defy
Last Line: Through all eternity shall never die.
Subject(s): Immortality


I live: this much I know; and I defy
The world to prove that I shall ever die!
But all men perish? Aye, and even so
Beneath the grasses lay this body low;
Forever close these eyes and still this breath;
All this, yet I shall not have tasted death.

Where are the lips that prattled infant lays?
The eyes that shone with light of childhood's days?
The heart that bubbled o'er with boyhood's glee?
The limbs that bounded as the chamois free?
The ears that heard life's music everywhere?
These, all, where are they now? Declare.

Forever gone; forever dead! Yet still
I live. My love, my hate, my fear, my will,
My all that makes life living firm abides.
Death is my youth, and so my age must die;
But I remain—Imperishable I.

Speed day and year! Fleet by the stream of time!
Wing, birds of passage, to a sunnier clime.
Come change, come dissolution and decay,
To kill the very semblance of this clay!
Yet, know the conscious, the unchanging I
Through all eternity shall never die.





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