DEATH AND ETERNITY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2455, 3 April 1901, Page 62

DEATH AND ETERNITY.

What is it, Death, we fear in thee When from its crumbling house of clay Thou bidd'st the fainting soul away? Is it the parting agony, The pangs of body, rack of mind (The last reserved for sad mankind'), The silence and the Egyptian gloom That mark the passage to the tomb? Is it the weeping friends we leave That make us most to fret and grieve, And long to tarry here awhile To cheer their hearts and bid them smila; And chiefly her who drooping stands At our bedside, with trembling hands Thafl scarcely from, the pallid brow Can wipe the death-dew's clammy flow? Or are we loth to quit the hearth That children make a flowery path. Of present joys and dim revealmgs Of bliss that we may one day see As members of God's family' Is it the cold and wormy bed Where each must lay a lonely head, And moiilder to a, sorry heap Of dust whose worth some tree may reap? Is it that troop of fiends that tread The cover of the sick man's bed And to his fancy make the light More awful than the murkiest night, Breaking his healing slumbers quiet With mad, unholy sounds of riot — Wild laughter, and still wilder cries, While they adowi his starting eyes Launch their keen swords, that in his brain. Flash with great throbs of quivering pain? Ah! no, it is not Death, thy ghastly bier. Thy gleaming scythe, thy bony arms, That give the mmd its worst alarms; Nor it 13 that pale horror hid Beneath tho hollow coffin lid. It is the silent, awful doubt That steals withm and puts to roiifc Our liveliest hope, our firmest trust In that old promise that from dust Th? freed, ecstatic soul shall spring Immortal to its Lord and King. It 13 the memoiy of our deeds Whereat our gu'lty conscience bleeds, And peering through Death's portals grey Anticipates the ludgment day. It. is that boundless stretch of sea We idly name Eternity — On whc?e dark verge when we do stand We shuddering turn to hug this land — Albeit but a soriy place In the rich realms of stariy space! We hug this shore, so loth to die That wr> would lather grovelling ply Our scidid tasks, our poor ambition, Our eating cares, and piercing sorrows "For* a long age of dull to-morrows. Than <rust that lonely, dark transition From life through death to life again, Thoiigh it had ne'er a groan or pam— » So grim a dread have- we of thee, Thou unexplored, forbidding sea., Insciutable Eternity! — H. J. B, March, 1901.