Excerpt from Memorial Ode: And Other Poems Nor comes again in its own form and hue; And love that springs from dead love's urned repose Makes not the old joy new. Ah for this transitory human life, Where at the last all strivers cease from strife And over them and theirs is cast the spell Of death's Irrevocable! Where unto them that have so nobly striven For heaven's best boon, behold what boon is given A little time of hopes and joys and fears, A little sound of music in their ears, A little light upon their eyes and then Darkness again. Prayer shall avail not to avert this doom; For man and all that man's hand fashioneth Shall find within the wide domain of death An unremembered tomb. But hold! The eyes of men Made keen with penetrating through the veil Behind which matter hides it from our ken, Have found, past all doubt's mockery to assail, An immortality within the clod, An essence that shall live unchallenged on Though the live light of sunlit heaven should fail And earth wait vainly for one darkling dawn, Perchance incarnate God. Pent in the silent caverns of the earth, Scarce stirred since the world's birth, Or brought where the rains nourish, the sun warms To gather vigor of the sun and rains And pass through thousand Protean forms Of blade and blossom, stone and beast and tree And man's supremacy, Through change unchanged this essence still remains. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.