All change is God; immutably the same
In form of Beauty and sublime display;
In most dread hours, His glory beameth out
To light up glory in the human soul.
Thou, thou hast passed all change of human life,
And not again to thee shall Beauty die,
Or Greatness in his robe of terror come.
No devastation passeth o'er those fields;
The fruits abide, and who partake abide
Their high communings. Life and Death is not.
Winter, dread Undertaker, thou art come!
And how unique are thy official deeds!
The living and the dead, uncoffined, both
Live in our meanest traversings concealed.
The heralds of thy coming scattered truths;
And, gorgeously arrayed, they looked so gay,
Admiring them, we lost the lesson quite.
Then those Old Priests, with withered arms, stood up
And read a service: requiems were pealed,
And under-tones of death; long deep-drawn sighs
Passed o'er the living at their tasks and plays.
And what a burial! Sexton nor grave
The buried bound about, and palled—all one—
And thou dost bury o'er the safe-interred,
As thou had st power to shut them deeper down
Into the cold dark trophy-room of Death.
As well might boast of hulls and husks and shells,
And other old investments dropped by life,
In passage up to higher, purer life.
Oh! there is Life so pure, commingles nought
To satiate the greedy maw of Death;
All unincumbered, incorrupt, and free!
Those dear remains can feel no adverse power,—
The Life that laid them down is free from stain,
And never shall put off its robe of light!
