So, is death an end,--but it breedeth an infinite beginning; Limits are for time, and death killed time: Eternity's beginning is for ever. Ambition, hath it any goal indeed? is not all fruition, disappointment? A step upon the ladder, and another, and another,--we start from every end? Look to the eras of mortality, babe, student, man, The husband, the father, the death-bed of a saint,--and is it then an end? That common climax, Death, shall it lead to nothing? How strong a root of causes flowering a consequence of vapour: That solid chain of facts, is it to be snapped for ever? How stout a show of figures, weakly summing to nonentity. Or haply, Death, in the doublings of thy thought, shall seem continuous ending; A dull eternal slumber, not an end abrupt. O most futile chrysalis, wherefore dost thou sleep? Dreamless, unconscious, never to awake,--what object in such slumber? If thou art still to live, it may as well be wakefully as sleeping: How grovelling must that spirit be, to need eternal sleep! Or was indeed the toil of life so heavy and so long, That nevermore can rest refresh thine overburdened soul?-- Sleep is a recreance to body, but when was mind asleep? Even in a swoon it dreameth, though all be forgotten afterward: The muscles seek relaxing, and the irritable nerves ask peace; But life is a constant force, spirit an unquietable impetus: The eye may wear out as a telescope, and the brain work slow as a machine, But soul unwearied, and for ever, is capable of effort unimpaired. I live, move, am conscious: what shall bar my being? Where is the rude hand, to rend this tissue of existence? Not thine, shadowy Death, what art thou but a phantom? Not thine, foul Corruption, what art thou but a fear? For death is merely absent life, as darkness absent light; Not even a suspension, for the life hath sailed away, steering gladly somewhere. And corruption, closely noted, is but a dissolving of the parts, The parts remain, and nothing lost, to build a better whole. Moreover, mind is unity, however versatile and rapid; Thou canst not entertain two coincident ideas, although they quickly follow: And Unity hath no parts, so that there is nothing to dissolve: An element is still unchanged in every searching solvent. Who then shall bid me be annulled,--He that gave me being? Amen, if God so will; I know that will is love: But love hath promised life, and therefore I shall live; So long as He is God, I shall be His Creature!