Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ONE LIFE AT A TIME by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS

First Line: IF THE DEAD CAME BACK
Last Line: MY DEAD COME BACK.
If the dead came back, --
If in some shadowy glen their forms might meet us,
Or from some wandering wind their voices greet us,
Or if, in all earth's strange or common places.
We might have hope to see the dear, dead faces,
Hope by keen eyes or hearing to discover
The father, sister, husband, wife, or lover,
From death come back, --

Life would be all a watching and a waiting,
A standing tiptoe at the mystic grating,
A pleading for the blessed shapes to linger,
Straining to touch them with a doubting finger,
Chattering wildly of the past, and suing
Wildly for pardon of our evil doing
Before they died.

Their pardon, lacking God's, would still content us;
We should walk blindly in the way they sent us;
Follow no unseen Christ, nor seek the portal
Of that unseen, faith-conquered life immortal.
We should be serfs to sight, if out of heaven
To our crude eyes so crude a boon were given, --
Our dead come back.

And soon, distracted with this double showing,
Half earth, half heaven our doubtful senses knowing,
Labor would languish into dreams and fancies,
Duty be dazed by blinding sunward glances,
The world would grow less real, nor heaven come nearer,
Our dear ones be no happier or dearer,
Should they come back.

No happier -- ah, no! How selfish-hearted
Who wishes back the blessedly departed,
Back from their sunny peace and swift-winged power
Into our cares that clog and woes that lower,
Just that our faithless, fretful eyes may view them
A few brief years before we shall go to them,
When we are dead.

Ah, God knows best, one life at one time giving,
Sparing to fret us with a double living,
A clash of mysteries, two worlds, two missions,
Two stern and strange and masterful conditions.
My prayers I turn to praise, O God in heaven,
That to their wail this boon Thou hast not given, --
My dead come back.



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