Poems (Thaxter)/By the Dead

by Celia Thaxter

BY THE DEAD.

O Poverty! till now I never knew
 The meaning of the word! What lack is here!
O pale mask of a soul, great, good and true!
 O mocking semblance stretched upon a bier!

Each atom of this devastated face
 Was so instinct with power, with warmth and light;
What desert is so desolate! No grace
 Is left, no gleam, no change, no day, no night.

Where is the key that locked these gates of speech,
 Once beautiful, where thought stood sentinel,
Where sweetness sat, where wisdom passed, to teach
 Our weakness strength, our homage to compel?

Despoiled at last, and waste and barren lies
 This once so rich domain. Where lives and moves,
In what new world, the splendor of these eyes
 That dauntless lightened like imperial Jove's?

Annihilated, do you answer me?
 Blown out and vanished like a candle flame?
Is nothing left but this pale effigy,
 This silence drear, this dread without a name?

Has it been all in vain, our love and pride,
 This yearning love that still pursues our friend
Into the awful dark, unsatisfied,
 Bereft, and wrung with pain? Is this the end?

Would God so mock us? To our human sense
 No answer reaches through the doubtful air;
Yet with a living hope, profound, intense,
 Our tortured souls rebel against despair;

As bowing to the bitter fate we go
 Drooping and dumb as if beneath a curse;
But does not pitying Heaven answer "No!"
 With all the voices of the universe?