THE FUTURE LIFE
by: William Cullen Bryant
(1794-1878)
- OW shall
I know thee in the sphere which keeps
- The disembodied spirits of the dead,
- When all of thee that time could wither sleeps
- And perishes among the dust we tread?
-
- For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain
- If there I meet thy gentle presence not;
- Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again
- In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.
-
- Will not thy own meek heart demand me there?
- That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given --
- My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
- And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?
-
- In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind,
- In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
- And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
- Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
-
- The love that lived through all the stormy past,
- And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
- And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last,
- Shall it expire with life, and be no more?
-
- A happier lot than mine, and larger light,
- Await thee there, for thou hast bowed thy will
- In cheerful homage to the rule of right,
- And lovest all, and renderest good for ill.
-
- For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell
- Shrink and consume my heart as heat the scroll;
- And wrath has left its scar--that fire of hell
- Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.
-
- Yet, though thou wear'st the glory of the sky,
- Wilt thou not keep the same belovèd name,
- The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye,
- Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same?
-
- Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home,
- The wisdom that I learned so ill in this--
- The wisdom which is love--till I become
- Thy fit companion in that land of bliss?
"The Future Life" is reprinted
from Yale Book of American Verse. Ed. Thomas R. Lounsbury.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912. |
MORE POEMS BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT |
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