IMMORTALITY
by: Susan Mitchell
- GE cannot reach me where the veils
of God
- Have shut me in,
- For me the myriad births of stars and suns
- Do but begin,
- And here how fragrantly there blows to me
- The holy breath,
- Sweet from the flowers and stars and hearts of men.
- From life and death.
-
- We are not old, O heart, we are not old,
- The breath that blows
- The soul aflame is still a wandering wind
- That comes and goes;
- And the stirred heart with sudden raptured life
- A moment glows.
-
- A moment here--a bulrushs brown head
- In the grey rain,
- A moment there--a child drowned and a heart
- Quickened with pain;
- The name of Death, the blue deep heaven, the scent
- Of the salt sea,
- The spicy grass, the honey robbed
- From the wild bee.
-
- Awhile we walk the world on its wide roads
- And narrow ways,
- And they pass by, the countless shadowy troops
- Of nights and days;
- We know them not, O happy heart,
- For you and I
- Watch where within a slow dawn lightens up
- Another sky.
"Immortality" is reprinted
from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. Ed. Nicholson
& Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
MORE
POEMS BY SUSAN MITCHELL |
|