Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LIFE, by ELIZABETH DOTEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LIFE, by                    
First Line: To be, or not to be,' is not the question'
Last Line: Is swallowed up in immortality.
Alternate Author Name(s): Doten, Lizzie
Subject(s): Dramatists; Life; Poetry & Poets; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)


"TO be, or not to be," is not "the question;"
There is no choice of Life. Ay, mark it well!—
For Death is but another name for Change.
The weary shuffle off their mortal coil,
And think to slumber in eternal night.
But, lo! the man, though dead, is living still;
Unclothed, is clothed upon, and his Mortality
Is swallowed up of Life.

"He babbles o' green fields, then falls asleep,"
And straight awakes amid eternal verdure.
Fairer than "dreams of a Midsummer's Night,"
The fields Elysian stretch before him.
No "Tempest" rends the ever peaceful bowers
Of asphodel, and fadeless amaranth;
No hot sirocco blows with poisonous breath;
No midnight frights him with its goblins grim,
Presaging sudden death. No Macbeth there,
Mad with ambition, plotteth damning deeds;
No Hamlet, haunted by his father's ghost,
Stalks wildly forth intent on vengeance dire.
The curse of Cain on earth is consummate,
And knows no resurrection. Spirits learn
That spirit is immortal, and no poisoned cup,
Or dagger's thrust, or sting of deadly asp,
Can rob it of its Godlike attribute.
This mortal garb may be as full of wounds
And bloody rents as royal Cæsar's mantle;
Yet that which made it man or Cæsar liveth still.

Man learns, in this Valhalla of his soul,
To love, nor ever finds "Love's Labor Lost."
No two-faced Falstaff proffers double suit;
No Desdemona mourns Iago's art;
And every Romeo finds his Juliet.
The stroke of Death is but a kindly frost,
Which cracks the shell, and leaves the kernel room
To germinate. What most consummate fools
This fear of death doth make us! Reason plays
The craven unto sense, and in her fear
Chooses the slow and slavish death of life,
Rather than freedom in the life of death.
"Thus Ignorance makes cowards of us all,"
And blinds us to our being's best estate.
Madly we cling to life through nameless ills,
Pinched by necessity, and scourged by fate,
Fainting in heat and freezing in the cold,
While war, and pestilence, and sore distress,
Fever and famine, fire and flood, combine
To drive the spirit from its wreck of clay.

O, poor Humanity! How full of blots,
And stains, and pains, and miseries thou art!
Here let me be thine Antony, and plead
Thy cause against the slayers of thy peace.
Though wounded, yet thou art not dead, thou child
Of Immortality—thou heir of God!
He who would slay thee, be he brute or Brutus,
Plunges the dagger in his own vile heart.
And yet thy wounds are piteous. I could weep
That aught so fair from the Creator's hand
Should be so marred and mangled, like a lamb
Torn by the ravening wolves. Here, let me take
Thy mantle, pierced with gaping, ghastly wounds,
From daggers clutched by ingrate hands. O Truth!
How many, in thy sacred name, have slain
Humanity, thinking they did God service!
Rome, and not Cæsar—Doctrines, and not Men.

I cannot count the wounds which lust for power,
And wealth, and place, and precedence have made.
But, O! the keenest, deepest, deadliest stabs
Of all, were made by false Philosophy
And false Theology combined—
Philosophy, that knew not what it did;
Theology, that did not what it knew.
See here! This rent made by the fear of God,
That gracious God, whose "mercy seasons justice,"
Who feeds the raven, clothes the lilies, heeds
The sparrow when it falls, and sends his rain
Alike upon the evil and the good.
And yet they were all "honorable men"
Who taught this doctrine—"honorable men!"
Whose failing was a lack of common sense.

And, lo! here is another—Fear of Truth—
Blind Superstition made this horrid rent,
And Bigotry quick followed up the thrust.
O, 'tis an eye weeping great tears of blood!
An eagle eye, that dared to love the light
Which Bigotry and Superstition feared,
Lest it should make their deeds of evil plain.
Thus is it, he who dares to see a Truth
Not recognized in creeds, must die the death.
But noon-day never stayed for bats and owls,
And Truth's clear light shall yet arise and shine.

See here: another wound—The fear of Death—
That blesséd consummation of this life,
Which soothes all pain, makes good all loss, revives
The weak, gives rest and peace, makes free the slave,
Levels all past distinctions, and doth place
The beggar on a footing with the king.
O, poor Humanity! those who conspired
To slay thee, through exceeding love for God,
And for the glory of His mighty name,
Smote at the very centre of thy peace,
And damning doubts, like daggers' thrusts, attest
How zealously they aimed each cruel blow.

And yet, this rent and bloody mantle is not thee.
Slain, but not dead—thy spirit shall arise
And face thy startled enemies again,
As royal Cæsar's ghost appeared to Brutus,
In Sardis' and Philippi's tented plains.
Thou royal heir to kingdoms yet unknown!
A mightier than Cæsar is thy Friend.
He stays the hand of Cassius, Brutus, all
Who aim their weapons at thy life, and dulls
Their daggers' points against thy deathless soul.
From every gaping wound of fear or doubt,
Murder or malice, sorrow or despair,
Thy spirit leaps as from a prison door.
It laughs at death and daggers, as it flies
To hold companionship with spirits blest;
And having thus informed itself of life,
The question then,—"To be, or not to be?"—
Is swallowed up in Immortality.





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