Part 6

When for us our eyes are closed in silent sleep, And over our rigid body is spread the sheet, While loved ones around us sob and weep. When in black our form is shrouded; And taken to some church all crowded, Our last rites to receive at loving hands, Who over our coffin wreathe their garlands Of flowers, whose fragrance perfume The air, while loving hearts with song attune, The stillness to break in hymns of hope; And the speaker in his talk to cope With human grief and doubts and fears, Says consoling words to dry up our tears. When in our grave, made with pick and spade, Our embalmed body is solemnly laid; Does that end us all and all our parade? Is that all of life to end in dust? From which our body came once robust? Or will there come some unseen power Our lost life to restore in some distant hour, By some loud trumpet blast us awake From deep sleep our slumber to break? Who pines the answer to know, May have to wait, or the knowledge forego. Science teaches that what of life we see, In man as in vegetation, shrub and tree, Are manifestations of acts the body performs. That mystic thing called “thought” man’s life adorns, Is but the throbbing of the active brain. That each lobe and part of the brain, Responds to particular senses we feel. One convolution smells, one hears, one sees; One urges locomotion, or brings us to our knees; As upon them play the subtle waves from without Receiving the response within of what we’re about. If all this be true, how can it be That when this machine is destroyed as we see, That these results can obtain thus set free. When the grey matter of the brain is back in dust, Into its original atoms rudely thrust. Unless it be that life itself is a thing apart, And the brain, nerves and throbbing heart, Are but the instruments through which it plays, And when this body in which it now stays, With all of its parts, is dead and gone, Another new body shall us adorn. They tell us such things in a book divine; And that this new body shall shine, Forever amid the stars and in glory shall walk, Around a throne and to the king shall talk; And that under the shade of the tree of life, Find eternal peace free from toil and strife.

Death

Death always strikes with a terrific blow, Because it drives us to where we do not know. All the saddened past has been filled with a guess. Ages have been spent in trying to relieve its distress. Men have sought magic and the spells it casts To answer questions and all inquiries of death asked. Yet, after all, we simply know that it is the fate We all must equally share with those we love or hate. Life is but a short story for us when it is told; Its brief animation for the young and for the old Is only an agitation, a ripple on the waves of time. A few joys, a few sorrows, a few thoughts sublime As onward we speed into the Great Beyond unknown. Could we but open the doors and see the paths strown With all the remains of the billions before us thrown Into the gaping jaws of death, devouring its own, We might then unravel its mysteries deep, We might then have visions of those who sleep; But into that vast chasm none are allowed to peep. Vain it is to pry into this oblivion profound, Vain to attempt its hidden meaning to expound; Vain to ask why the hungry jaws of this Monster Great Does not spare our loved ones, why he should immolate Kings in palaces and peasants in huts of want, Babes in cradles and aged ones lean and gaunt. If we are inevitably doomed to this common end; Should we fear when towards it our journeys tend? We cannot shun it by fear or by hope, We must meet it, and with its pangs must cope. In which ever way our winding paths may lead Death faces us with its devastating looks of greed. It comes to us in a thousand different ways; It visits us at night when the sun has hid its rays; It greets us at noonday when the sun is high; No one can escape its ever-vigilant eye; All the living must yield up to it and die. Is death a curse, then all the living are cursed; Is death a blessing, then all the living will be blessed. It cannot be an evil, nature creates nothing wrong; And it is only nature while we follow it along. Mother earth brings us all into this life; And this same mother calls us back from its strife. Can it be that our mother would be unkind? In a universal mother, universal love we find. Although her children be numbered by millions; And all her numberless offspring run into billions; Yet no partiality she shows; all are treated the same; Her rules are based on fate, break them and bear the blame. How could her laws be varied to suit her flock? Anarchy would reign and destroy her stock. One universal law; death waits us all; So let us be courageous while we wait its call.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Twentieth Century Epic, by R. B. Garnett