A LAST WORD

Oh, for some cup of consummating might,

Filled with life's kind conclusion, lost in night!

A wine of darkness, that with death shall cure

This sickness called existence!— Oh to find

Surcease of sorrow! quiet for the mind,

An end of thought in something dark and sure!

Mandrake and hellebore, or poison pure!—

Some drug of death, wherein there are no dreams!—

No more, no more, with patience, to endure

The wrongs of life, the hate of men, it seems;

Or wealth's authority, tyranny of time,

And lamentations and the boasts of man!

To hear no more the wild complaints of toil,

And struggling merit, that, unknown, must starve:

To see no more life's disregard for Art!

Oh God! to know no longer anything!

Nor good, nor evil, or what either means!

Nor hear the changing tides of customs roll

On the dark shores of Time! No more to hear

The stream of Life that furies on the shoals

Of hard necessity! No more to see

The unavailing battle waged of Need

Against adversity!— Merely to lie, at last,

Pulseless and still, at peace beneath the sod!

To think and dream no more! no more to hope!

At rest at last! at last at peace and rest,

Clasped by some kind tree's gnarled arm of root

Bearing me upward in its large embrace

To gentler things and fairer — clouds and winds,

And stars and sun and moon! To undergo

The change the great trees know when Spring comes in

With shoutings and rejoicings of the rain,

To swiftly rise an atom in a host,

The myriad army of the leaves; and stand

A handsbreadth nearer Heaven and what is God!

To pulse in sap that beats unfevered in

The life we call inanimate — the heart

Of some great tree. And so, unconsciously,

As sleeps a child, clasped in its mother's arm,

Be taken back, in amplitudes of grace,

To Nature's heart, and so be lost in her.