Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MYSTERY, by BAYARD TAYLOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MYSTERY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thou art not dead; thou art not gone to dust
Last Line: The light of mine, and give me death with thee?
Alternate Author Name(s): Taylor, James Bayard
Subject(s): Beauty; Death; Kisses; Time; Dead, The


THOU art not dead; thou art not gone to dust;
No line of all thy loveliness shall fall
To formless ruin, smote by Time, and thrust
Into the solemn gulf that covers all.

Thou canst not wholly perish, though the sod
Sink with its violets closer to thy breast;
Though by the feet of generations trod,
The headstone crumbles from thy place of rest.

The marvel of thy beauty cannot die;
The sweetness of thy presence shall not fade;
Earth gave not all the glory of thine eye, --
Death may not keep what Death has never made.

It was not thine, that forehead strange and cold,
Nor those dumb lips, they hid beneath the snow;
Thy heart would throb beneath that passive fold,
Thy hands for me that stony clasp forego.

But thou hadst gone, -- gone from the dreary land,
Gone from the storms let loose on every hill,
Lured by the sweet persuasion of a hand
Which leads thee somewhere in the distance still.

Where'er thou art, I know thou wearest yet
The same bewildering beauty, sanctified
By calmer joy, and touched with soft regret
For him who seeks, but cannot reach thy side.

I keep for thee the living love of old,
And seek thy place in Nature, as a child
Whose hand is parted from his playmate's hold,
Wanders and cries along a lonesome wild.

When, in the watches of my heart, I hear
The messages of purer life, and know
The footsteps of thy spirit lingering near,
The darkness hides the way that I should go.

Canst thou not bid the empty realms restore
That form, the symbol of thy heavenly part?
Or on the fields of barren silence pour
That voice, the perfect music of thy heart?

Oh once, once bending to these widowed lips,
Take back the tender warmth of life from me,
Or let thy kisses cloud with swift eclipse
The light of mine, and give me death with thee?





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