The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag/Immortality
Immortality
I love to wander through the ancient aisles
Of venerable groves, where in the hush
And twilight of primeval peace, I feel
The calm beatitude of Nature's reign.
There flow the currents of unchanging law,
That mould the varied forms of tree and shrub,
Carve the high rocks and grottoes, guard the streams,
Fashion the hills and valleys, and o'er all
The sentient scene bespread the green of spring,
The hues of summer, the autumnal wealth
Of red and gold, and winter's mantle hoar.
There speaks a voice amongst the crowd unheard;
A low and soothing voice that strikes the soul,
Yet sounds not on the ear; an awesome voice
That swells from Nature's heart and teaches truth.
In such dim haunts, from earthly fardels free,
I rove at ease, companion to myself,
Grave with the musings that had else been stilled
By worldly animation, or dismissed
In formal reams of philosophic lore.
'Tis then I view with vision unafraid
The rampart of the future, and the road
Which meets it at the stout-barred gate called Death.
Beyond that wall no mortal eye hath seen;
None knows the windings of the road beyond;
Yet who can say it runs not past the wall?
I glance about me at the shadowy slopes,
Where Age and Death flit noiseless o'er the moss
And leaves and mould that strew the forest floor.
Here spectral tree-trunks lie in crumbling lines,
Last relics of a primal sylvan race,
And in their dank decadence gleam and glow
With eery phosphorescence, or emit
Uncanny vapors. Here majestic rise
The leafless patriarchs of the dying wood,
Whose very majesty predicts their fall,
And swells the gloom of the funereal scene.
Here dwells indeed the dismal end of life!
But as I scan the realms of dusk and death,
Peering betwixt the tottering trunks that loom
Like age-worn seers of dark Egyptian days,
I see new signs amidst the rotting bark
And crumbling boughs and matted moss and mould
That paves this fane of Atropos. I see
In glades where Death hath felled some giant trunk,
Green tiny shoots of infant trees, sprung up
Beneath the unaccustomed solar rays;
In dampness bred, nourished by chemic pow'r
Of dead putrescence, drawing a new life
From lives that are no more; fulfilling thus
The cosmic cycle of eternal change
That ceaseless brings alternate birth and death.
And thus from Nature's docent tongue I learn
That death is but a change; that surgent life
Ends not, but passes on from form to form,
And that from old things new anon are framed.
In verdant shrub the mouldering tree revives;
In flaming nebula the dead star shines,
Nature, receiving all, to all gives birth,
And Death is but the sweet homecoming hour,
When weary Life the source maternal seeks,
Renews its outward garments, and prepares
For greater splendor and for wider range.
Of venerable groves, where in the hush
And twilight of primeval peace, I feel
The calm beatitude of Nature's reign.
There flow the currents of unchanging law,
That mould the varied forms of tree and shrub,
Carve the high rocks and grottoes, guard the streams,
Fashion the hills and valleys, and o'er all
The sentient scene bespread the green of spring,
The hues of summer, the autumnal wealth
Of red and gold, and winter's mantle hoar.
There speaks a voice amongst the crowd unheard;
A low and soothing voice that strikes the soul,
Yet sounds not on the ear; an awesome voice
That swells from Nature's heart and teaches truth.
In such dim haunts, from earthly fardels free,
I rove at ease, companion to myself,
Grave with the musings that had else been stilled
By worldly animation, or dismissed
In formal reams of philosophic lore.
'Tis then I view with vision unafraid
The rampart of the future, and the road
Which meets it at the stout-barred gate called Death.
Beyond that wall no mortal eye hath seen;
None knows the windings of the road beyond;
Yet who can say it runs not past the wall?
I glance about me at the shadowy slopes,
Where Age and Death flit noiseless o'er the moss
And leaves and mould that strew the forest floor.
Here spectral tree-trunks lie in crumbling lines,
Last relics of a primal sylvan race,
And in their dank decadence gleam and glow
With eery phosphorescence, or emit
Uncanny vapors. Here majestic rise
The leafless patriarchs of the dying wood,
Whose very majesty predicts their fall,
And swells the gloom of the funereal scene.
Here dwells indeed the dismal end of life!
But as I scan the realms of dusk and death,
Peering betwixt the tottering trunks that loom
Like age-worn seers of dark Egyptian days,
I see new signs amidst the rotting bark
And crumbling boughs and matted moss and mould
That paves this fane of Atropos. I see
In glades where Death hath felled some giant trunk,
Green tiny shoots of infant trees, sprung up
Beneath the unaccustomed solar rays;
In dampness bred, nourished by chemic pow'r
Of dead putrescence, drawing a new life
From lives that are no more; fulfilling thus
The cosmic cycle of eternal change
That ceaseless brings alternate birth and death.
And thus from Nature's docent tongue I learn
That death is but a change; that surgent life
Ends not, but passes on from form to form,
And that from old things new anon are framed.
In verdant shrub the mouldering tree revives;
In flaming nebula the dead star shines,
Nature, receiving all, to all gives birth,
And Death is but the sweet homecoming hour,
When weary Life the source maternal seeks,
Renews its outward garments, and prepares
For greater splendor and for wider range.
1918