That Sleep of Death

“ YOUR bed of earth is made. Come, leave the show.”
Death calls! My yearning eyes must turn away
From earth’s entrancing stage, from God’s great play
Where, lit by daring souls in shining row,
The pageants of achievement come and go;
Where peace meets war in strife, and kings obey,
And science thunders while old creeds decay,
And spectral plagues are laid, and empires grow.

I may not see the marriage of two seas
That God disjoined, nor from her Russian tomb
Dead Freedom burst alive. Turn, eyes! Bend, knees!
I fear no dreams, nor dark, nor any doom,
Yet cannot for this loss my soul appease:
There is no stage within the sodded gloom.