Renascence, and Other Poems

John Stuart Mill · en
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
  My anguished spirit, like a bird,
  Beating against my lips I heard;
  Yet lay the weight so close about
  There was no room for it without.
  And so beneath the weight lay I
  And suffered death, but could not die.

  Long had I lain thus, craving death,
  When quietly the earth beneath
  Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
  At last had grown the crushing weight,
  Into the earth I sank till I
  Full six feet under ground did lie,
  And sank no more,--there is no weight
  Can follow here, however great.
  From off my breast I felt it roll,
  And as it went my tortured soul
  Burst forth and fled in such a gust
  That all about me swirled the dust.

  Deep in the earth I rested now;
  Cool is its hand upon the brow
  And soft its breast beneath the head
  Of one who is so gladly dead.
  And all at once, and over all
  The pitying rain began to fall;
  I lay and heard each pattering hoof
  Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
  And seemed to love the sound far more
  Than ever I had done before.
  For rain it hath a friendly sound
  To one who's six feet underground;
  And scarce the friendly voice or face:
  A grave is such a quiet place.

  The rain, I said, is kind to come
  And speak to me in my new home.
  I would I were alive again
  To kiss the fingers of the rain,
  To drink into my eyes the shine
  Of every slanting silver line,
  To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
  From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
  For soon the shower will be done,
  And then the broad face of the sun
  Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
  Until the world with answering mirth
  Shakes joyously, and each round drop
  Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
  How can I bear it; buried here,
  While overhead the sky grows clear
  And blue again after the storm?
  O, multi-colored, multiform,
  Beloved beauty over me,
  That I shall never, never see
  Again!  Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
  That I shall never more behold!
  Sleeping your myriad magics through,
  Close-sepulchred away from you!
  O God, I cried, give me new birth,
  And put me back upon the earth!
  Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
  And let the heavy rain, down-poured
  In one big torrent, set me free,
  Washing my grave away from me!