ALL the west, whereon the sunset sealed the dead year's glorious grave Fast with seals of light and fire and cloud that light and fire illume, Glows at heart and kindles earth and heaven with joyous blush and bloom, Warm and wide as life, and glad of death that only slays to save. As a tide-reconquered sea-rock lies aflush with the influent wave Lies the light aflush with darkness, lapped about by lustrous gloom, Even as life with death, and fame with time, and memory with the tomb Where a dead man hath for vassals Fame the serf and Time the slave. Far from earth as heaven, the steadfast light withdrawn, superb, suspense, Burns in dumb divine expansion of illimitable flower: Moonrise whets the shadow's edges keen as noontide: hence and thence Glows the presence from us passing, shines and passes not the power. Souls arise whose word remembered is as spirit within the sense: All the hours are theirs of all the seasons: death has but his hour. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LEAVING THE HARBOR by LOUIS UNTERMEYER BLIZZARD by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS WHY I LOVE HER by ALEXANDER BROME THE WATER MILL by SARAH DOUDNEY INVITATION TO LOVE by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL VALENTINES TO MY MOTHER: 1880 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI ODE IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS FALLEN FOR FRANCE by ALAN SEEGER |