Poems (Hinxman)/"That Mortality might be swallowed up of Life"
"THAT MORTALITY MIGHT BE SWALLOWED UP OF LIFE."
Like sunken vessels, like sea-buried towns,
All that has owed to death or time its birth,
Its fickle beauty, or its bitter strength,—
All change whose dawning made the eager heart
Beat high with expectation, but to droop
In vain regret ere yet its noon was told—
Pageants and strifes, wild aimings, restless hopes,—
The tender, mournful honours of the grave,—
The bursting grief, the long enduring ache,—
All absence, parting, weariness, desire,—
All shall be swallowed up; all shall go down
Beneath the inflowing of the sea of life;
Above, the luminous eternal Calm
Shall settle on its face, and none shall lean
With wistful gazing o'er its depths, as once
The mariner looked down for buried Tyre,
And none shall leave their joyful harps unstrung
To pace its shore with pensive steps, and seek
For fragments left of the remorseful tide:
Nor tide, nor wind, on that eternal sea
For ever still, yet fresh, shall bring to view
The unloved relics of mortality.
All that has owed to death or time its birth,
Its fickle beauty, or its bitter strength,—
All change whose dawning made the eager heart
Beat high with expectation, but to droop
In vain regret ere yet its noon was told—
Pageants and strifes, wild aimings, restless hopes,—
The tender, mournful honours of the grave,—
The bursting grief, the long enduring ache,—
All absence, parting, weariness, desire,—
All shall be swallowed up; all shall go down
Beneath the inflowing of the sea of life;
Above, the luminous eternal Calm
Shall settle on its face, and none shall lean
With wistful gazing o'er its depths, as once
The mariner looked down for buried Tyre,
And none shall leave their joyful harps unstrung
To pace its shore with pensive steps, and seek
For fragments left of the remorseful tide:
Nor tide, nor wind, on that eternal sea
For ever still, yet fresh, shall bring to view
The unloved relics of mortality.
Jan. 15. 1853.