Grim Dissolution knows no favorites, But in his multiplicity of shapes Invades alike, with stern resistless step, The squalid hovel with its noisome air, And palace most replete with opulence; Those of exalted station, and the hordes To whom existence means but servitude, Who see the golden sun arise and bring No intermission from their ceaseless toil, Who hope for respite only with the night; Those who in dread reluctance shrank from death, And those who neither knew nor cared the hour, To life and death alike indifferent, Or fain themselves would snap the fragile thread; Mankind in all conditions and degrees Of culture, affluence and penury, Of multiform endowments and desires, With differing talents and proclivities, Yea, all varieties and types of men, With pathways various and diversified, Have found their paths converging at the grave. Each, as the gathering shadows of the night, In solemn chaos of unfathomed gloom, Descend in sombre, melancholy pall, And mark apace life's transitory eve, Must quaff, alike, the bitter draught of death, The one libation in which all who breathe May in all equity participate. Each, at the expiration of his span, Has found the same relentless terminal, And faltering on dissolution's brink, With what of strength, or guilt or innocence Did mark the tenor of his brief career, Has passed up to the margin of the grave, Then disappeared forever. What is Death? We know not, yet in verity we feel That, though of most immediate concern, And shrouded deep in sable mystery, Though most abstruse, intangible and strange, 'Tis not of our volition and control! It therefore proves, as life doth ever prove, With all abundant plenitude of proof, A Force superior to human strength, And should afford no premises for fear. [FINIS] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Passing of the Storm and Other Poems, by Alfred Castner King