POET: So that with our own hands we may scatter The beloved ashes upon the spot of our communion, Giving them to the eternal Waste, Or to the swift-running heralds of the air.
TRUTH: If you would but let her.
How tenderly would Nature withdraw each one of you Toward her chamber of silence. Death is her supremest perfection; her most excellent
kindness ; Nurse unto her children. Even the ant is not forgotten.
POET:
Death,
Beautiful as Birth ; harmony inseparable ; awful majesty.
I await you. I salute you.
Your face is inscrutable.
But I know you are a goodly messenger.
You hold open the portal of Mystery.
Through you, oh inexorable and compelling one,
I, too, shall salute the Future.
XX.
POET: Between these two immensities, under the infinite arches. Death seems only the deeper note in the song eternal. The death of Man not more than the death of this little
horned-toad. Whose dry husk I toss with my foot. Here lie the empty shells of cows, withered in the sun ; The skulls and ribs of horses, A pile of stones above a man's grave. For, to Man, dead bones are sacred, though not the living
flesh. Even the toiler, dead, is respected for a moment.
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