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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IMMORTALITY, by JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE Poet's Biography
First Line: How like a second nature to our souls
Last Line: Exiled to earth, now seeking home again!
Subject(s): Immortality
First Line: How like a second nature to our souls
Last Line: Exiled to earth, now seeking home again!
Subject(s): Immortality
HOW like a second nature to our souls
Is immortality. 'Tis not of earth,
But comes a ray from heaven, that unfolds
The budding instinct of another birth.
Who from the void can make a man but God?
And if God make him, shall He then ordain
That, having breathed upon the senseless clod,
Back to the void shall turn His work again?
Through endless time no more nor yet no less
Than making man for woe and wretchedness?
Away the thought! The deathless Deed that springs
From out its dust-encumbered home of clay,
And, like a beam of morning, folds its wings
Only 'mid the twilight of a perfect day—
This cannot die! 'Tis part of God himself,
A heart-throb of Infinity!
The Thought that spans the arch of silent stars,
Scaling the rugged battlements, where rise
The roof above time's own grim prison bars—
Searching beneath the shadows of eternal skies
For captive Truth—this cannot die! 'Tis God's own child
Exiled to earth, now seeking home again!
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
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WALLACE STEVENS' LETTERS by ROBERT BLY
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING by DAVID IGNATOW
I CLOSE MY EYES by DAVID IGNATOW
IN 'DESIGNING A CLOAK TO CLOAK HIS DESIGNS' YOU WRESTED FROM OBLIVION by MARIANNE MOORE
THE THINGS THAT DIE by GREGORY ORR
THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
YOUTH'S IMMORTALITY by GEORGE SANTAYANA
A HARVEST SONG by JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
A MEMORIAL DAY POEM FOR THE CONFEDERACY by JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE