Mortality
Mortality
Original Text
Dinah Maria Craik, Poems (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), pp. 56-57. LE C887p. Robarts Library.
"And we shall be changed."
2 Pressed each to each in tender fold,
3And peacefully thus, day by day,
4 Returning to their mould;
5Brown leaves, that with aerial grace
6 Slip from your branch like birds a-wing,
7Each leaving in the appointed place
8 Its bud of future spring; --
9If we, God's conscious creatures, knew
10 But half your faith in our decay,
11We should not tremble as we do
12 When summoned clay to clay.
13But with an equal patience sweet
14 We should put off this mortal gear,
15In whatsoe'er new form is meet
16 Content to reappear.
17Knowing each germ of life He gives
18 Must have in Him its source and rise,
19Being that of His being lives
20 May change, but never dies.
21Ye dead leaves, dropping soft and slow,
22 Ye mosses green and lichens fair,
23Go to your graves, as I will go,
24 For God is also there.
Notes
1] The epigram comes from 1 Corinthians 15.51-52: "Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1859
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
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