Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume II/Nothing That Can Die

by Florence Earle Coates

For other versions of this work, see Nothing that can die.

NOTHING THAT CAN DIE

NOTHING that we deem can die
Has any thought of death:
The mortal thing, without a sigh—
Without reproachful plaint or cry—
Yields scarcely conscious breath;
The coming sleep to it the same
As that from which it all-unknowing came.

But spirit cannot so resign
A hope that o'er the depths of sorrow
Like to a star remains: a sign
That strengthens, by its beam divine,
To-day with promise of To-morrow!
Nay; longing, vital, and foreseeing,
Itself becomes a pledge of deathless being.