Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


WE SHALL ATTAIN by JAMES BENJAMIN KENYON

First Line: WE SHALL ATTAIN - YES, THOUGH THIS DUST SHALL FAIL
Last Line: YET IN OUR FRAILTY—WE SHALL CONQUER DEATH.
Subject(s): IMMORTALITY;

We shall attain—yea, though this dust shall fail,
And though all evil things conspire to bind
The struggling soul with gyves of sense, and blind
Our faith with clay, and though all foes assail
To utterly destroy us: yet from wail,
From misery and from doubt, from all mankind
False hopes, and from the dwarfed and prisoned mind,
We shall attain to life beyond the vail.

Yea, though 'tis written that all flesh is grass,
Which springeth up at morn and flourisheth,
And which at even, when th' inverted glass
Is emptied of its sands, fades as the breath.
The dew-lipped rose sighs on the winds that pass—
Yet in our frailty—we shall conquer death.



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