Or else to live wholly the life of sheep,
Without a name; and in God’s ear, now deaf,
Pour unavailing weeping. Shall not God
Almighty, ’neath whose law are all things ruled,
135 Be able after death life to restore?
Or is there ought which the creation’s Lord
Unable seems to do? If, darkness chased,
He could outstretch the light, and could compound
All the world’s mass by a word suddenly,
140 And raise by potent voice all things from nought,
Why out of somewhat could He not compound
The well-known shape which erst had been, which He
Had moulded formerly; and bid the form
Arise assimilated to Himself
145 Again? Since God’s are all things, earth the more
Gives Him all back; for she will, when He bids,
Unweave whate’er she woven had before.
If one, perhaps, laid on sepulchral pyre,
The flame consumed; or one in its blind waves
150 The ocean have dismembered; if of one
The entrails have, in hunger, satisfied
The fishes; or on any’s limbs wild beasts
Have fastened cruel death; or any’s blood,
His body reft by birds, unhid have lain:
155 Yet shall they not wrest from the mighty Lord
His latest dues. Need is that men appear
Quickened from death ’fore God, and at His bar
Stand in their shapes resumed. Thus arid seeds
Are drops into the vacant lands, and deep
160 In the fixt furrows die and rot: and hence
Is not their surface animated soon
With stalks repaired? and do they not grow strong
And yellow with the living grains? and, rich
With various usury, new harvests rise
165 In mass? The stars all set, and, born again,
Renew their sheen; and day dies with its light
Lost in dense night; and now night wanes herself
As light unveils creation presently;
And now another and another day
170 Rises from its own stars; and the sun sets,
Bright as it is with splendour—bearing light;
Light perishes when by the coming eve
The world is shaded; and the phœnix lives
By her own soot renewed, and presently
175 Rises, again a bird, O wondrous sight!