Page:The Collected Poems of Dora Sigerson Shorter.djvu/256

You feared the world, the pity of men or their scorn,
The movements of fate and the sorrows for which you were born.
Men's laughter, men's speech, their judging, what was it to this
Where the eyes of the dead proclaim you have done amiss?

Not peace did you gain, perhaps, nor the rest you had planned,
'Neath the horrible countless eyes that you could not withstand?
Or was it, God looked from His throne in a moment's disdain,
And you shrieked for a trial once more in the height of your pain?

Perhaps—but who knows?—when you struggled so hard for life's breath,
You saw nothing passing the grave except silence and death;
You lay shut in by the four day walls of your cell.
There the live soul locked up in the stiff dead body's shell.

Dead, dead and coffin'd, buried beneath the day,
And still the living soul caged in to wait decay,
For ever alone in night of unlifting gloom
There to think, and think, and think, in the silent tomb.

Or was it in death's cold land there was no perfume
Of the scented flowers, or lilt of a bird's gay tune;
No sea there, or no cool of a wind's fresh breath.
No woods, no plains, no dreams, and alas! no death?