There, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain That flared three several times in seventy years; It cannot lift the silly hand again, Nor speak, nor sing, it neither sees nor hears. And muffled mourners put it in the ground And then go home, and in the earth it lies, Too dark for vision and too deep for sound, The million cells that made a good man wise. Yet for a few short years an influence stirs A sense or wraith or essence of him dead, Which makes insensate things its ministers To those beloved, his spirit's daily bread; Then that, too, fades; in book or deed a spark Lingers, then that, too, fades; then all is dark. So in the empty sky the stars appear, Are bright in heaven marching through the sky, Spinning their planets, each one to his year, Tossing their fiery hair until they die; Then in the tower afar the watcher sees The sun, that burned, less noble than it was, Less noble still, until by dim degrees, No spark of him is specklike in his glass. Then blind and dark in heaven the sun proceeds, Vast, dead and hideous, knocking on his moons, Till crashing on his like creation breeds, Striking such life a constellation swoons. From dead things striking fire a new sun springs, New fire, new life, new planets with new wings. It may be so with us, that in the dark, When we have done with Time and wander Space, Some meeting of the blind may strike a spark, And to Death's empty mansion give a grace. It may be, that the loosened soul may find Some new delight of living without limbs, Bodiless joy of flesh-untrammelled mind, Peace like a sky where starlike spirit swims. It may be, that the million cells of sense, Loosed from their seventy years' adhesion, pass Each to some joy of changed experience, Weight in the earth or glory in the grass; It may be that we cease; we cannot tell. Even if we cease life is a miracle. Man has his unseen friend, his unseen twin, His straitened spirit's possibility, The palace unexplored he thinks an inn, The glorious garden which he wanders by. It is beside us while we clutch at clay To daub ourselves that we may never see. Like the lame donkey lured by moving hay We chase the shade but let the real be. Yet, when confusion in our heaven brings stress, We thrust on that unseen, get stature from it, Cast to the devil's challenge the man's yes, And stream our fiery hour like a comet, And know for that fierce hour a friend behind, With sword and shield, the second to the mind.