Life and Death

I stood in a dream between Life and Death,
And I whisper'd to the twain—
"Now, which of you has the sweetest faith,
And the highest and surest gain?"

Then Life, who stood at my left hand,
Spoke out, and said to me—
"Oh, mine is the firm, free step of youth,
And the voice of mirth and glee;

"And mine is the friendship of heart to heart,
And the music of happy speech;
And mine are the customs that walk with men,
And the social habits they teach.

"Mine, too, are the blossoms of sweet young hopes,
And the Iris light they shed;
And mine is the flush of the coming years,
For I think not of the dead.

"I give the bride, in her dower of smiles,
To the breast of him she loves,
And her sweetest thoughts owe their birth to me,
While her heart beats like a dove's.

"I touch with a brighter look the hearth,
And the faces that gather there,
And I lay one hand on golden locks,
And the other on hoary hair.

"I bear in my cup, as I stride along,
Nepenthes for care and woe;
But alas for him that will drink and keep
His eyes still bent below."

Then Death spoke low and sweet to me,
As he stood at my right hand—
"Oh, mine is the stirless calm of love,
And the light of the better land;

"And mine are the forms that have left this earth,
The forms that you still must love.
I touch'd with my lightest touch their eyes,
But to open them up above—

"Open them up to the light and joy,
The blush and the golden glow—
And their beauty now is beyond that bloom
You have set in the long ago.

"So if, in the years that have pass'd away,
I have broken some cherish'd band,
And still in your heart you can hear a voice,
And feel in your own a hand,

"Then come, for mine are their spirits still,
With no touch of their earthly pain;
I sunder, and sunder but to join
Where I cannot part again."

Then methought, as I turn'd to welcome death
As the soother of all my fears,
I woke, and found life at my left hand,
And my cheek was wet with tears.