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+text By the Dead
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{{HPB-SB-item
{{HPB-SB-item
| volume = 3
| volume = 3
| item =1
| item =1
| type = poem
| type = poem
| status = wanted
| status = ok
| continues =
| continues =
| author =
| author = Thaxter, Celia Laighton
| title =By the Dead
| title =By the Dead
| subtitle =
| subtitle =
}}
}}
...
{{Style P-Poem|poem=O Poverty! till now I never knew
: The meaning of the word! What lack is here!
O pale mask of a soul great, good, and true!
: O mocking semblance stretched upon a bier!
Each atom of this devastated face
: Was so instinct with power, with warmth and light;
What desert is so desolate! No grace
: Is left, no gleam, no change, no day, no night.
Where is the key that locked these gates of speech,
: Once beautiful, where thought stood sentinel,
Where sweetness sat, where wisdom passed, to teach
: Our weakness strength, our homage to compel?
Despoiled at last, and waste and barren lies
: This once so rich domain. Where lives and moves,
In what new world, the splendor of these eyes
: That dauntless lightened like imperial Jove's?
Annihilated, do you answer me?
: Blown out and vanished like a candle flame?
Is nothing left but this pale effigy,
: This silence drear, this dread without a name?
Has it been all in vain, our love and pride,
: This yearning love that still pursues our friend
Into the awful dark, unsatisfied,
: Bereft, and wrung with pain? Is this the end?
Would God so mock us? To our human sense
: No answer reaches through the doubtful air;
Yet with a living hope, profound, intense,
: Our tortured souls rebel against despair;
As bowing to the bitter fate we go
: Drooping and dumb as if beneath a curse;
But does not pitying Heaven answer " No! "
: With all the voices of the universe?}}
{{HPB-SB-item
{{HPB-SB-item
| volume = 3
| volume = 3