Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARD SUNRISE, by EFFIE WALLER SMITH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARD SUNRISE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When, in old days, our fathers came
Last Line: That cometh soon or late.
Subject(s): Dawn; Death; Life; Sunrise; Dead, The


When, in old days, our fathers came
To bury low their dead,
Unto the far-off eastern sky
They turned the narrow bed.

They laid the sleeper on his couch
With firm and simple faith
That cloudless morn would surely come
To end the night of death;

And thus they sought to place him where,
When life's clear sun should rise,
Its earliest rays might wakening fall
Across his close-sealed eyes.

Like a faint fragrance lingering on
Throughout unnumbered years,
Still in our country burial-grounds
The custom sweet appears;

Still, when the light of life from eyes
Beloved is withdrawn,
The sleepers' dreamless beds are made
Facing the looked-for dawn.

There, as the seasons pass, they seem
Serenely to await
The certain radiance of that Morn
That cometh soon or late.






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