Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THIS THING CALLED DEATH, by E. V. SHUTE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THIS THING CALLED DEATH, by                    
First Line: A hundred times I've sent a friend away
Last Line: Must come by death!
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


A hundred times I've sent a friend away
To strangers' cities or the purple lands
Where no sib dwelt, nor was there anyone
Should wet his thirst or give him friendly bread.
None should be there to pity, lend an ear
To tarnished fortune or his luck's mischance,
To ease his blunders and to be his guide,
To point out skilful men were any wise,
Who might have weight to rule, or should be curbed,
What wives were witty, fair, or hungry-hearted,
Where lay good company at an old inn.

Yet never have I given hand in parting
To any such, but I saw in his eye
Something expectant, eager, and already
Withdrawn and withdrawing from me. Feeling
Him poised as sprinters poise, assurance
Of meditated end has come to me, as he could match
Bold men, raw forms, brave days.

Strong fate has also set me by the beds
Where weary folk have laid aside their years,
Their kindred, critics, worries, chronic pains,
And turned to that hereafter populous
With all the ill-remembered gods of old
And all the pimps and Caesars of our dust,
Little has come back from that crowded realm
To feed our curious reason its due food --
A soup of theories spices with thwart desire
Is surely thin stomachic for lean minds
Aprowl for meat upon the edge of even!
Dare any say that he, and only he,
Has heard a cheering whisper from among
The breathless kingdoms? Is stumbling hope
By egoism out of fantasy
To bear us the dark journey?

As I have sat and mused upon these things,
Hearing faint breathings, fingering ragged pulse,
Wondering who like the dying may witness for the dead,
I've seen my patients imperceptibly
Go in the deep valley,
Be here -- then past all seeing --
And yet no sound of anguish or reproach
Cried to me from those depths, so softly
They sought th' abyss of sleep.
Others at parting smiled, nor meant to dupe
By fiction's last gallantry, but so parted
From their long-loved as if to meet them
At dated tryst.
I own that
But to watch dying men informs the sceptical
There lies fair journey's end beyond the scope
Of our half-knowledges. And if gray years
But teach their sober children dearest prizes
Are hardly come at, and with failing breath,
Surely the boon of perfect peace and knowledge
Must come by death!





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