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A VOICE FROM DEATH.
(The Johnstown, Penn., cataclysm, May 31, 1889.)
A VOICE from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and
power,
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With sudden, indescribable blow—towns drown’d—humanity by
thousands slain,
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The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron
bridge,
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| Dash’d pell-mell by the blow—yet usher’d life continuing on, |
| (Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris, |
| A suffering woman saved—a baby safely born!) |
| Although I come and unannounc’d, in horror and in pang, |
In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this
voice so solemn, strange,)
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| I too a minister of Deity. |
| Yea, Death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee, |
| We mourn the old, the young untimely drawn to thee, |
| The fair, the strong, the good, the capable, |
The household wreck’d, the husband and the wife, the engulf’d
forger in his forge,
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| The corpses in the whelming waters and the mud, |
The gather’d thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands
never found or gather’d.
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| Then after burying, mourning the dead, |
(Faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the
past, here new musing,)
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| A day—a passing moment or an hour—America itself bends low, |
| Silent, resign’d, submissive. |
| War, death, cataclysm like this, America, |
| Take deep to thy proud prosperous heart. |
| E’en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime, |
| The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love, |
| From West and East, from South and North and over sea, |
| Its hot-spurr’d hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; |
| And from within a thought and lesson yet. |
| Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air! |
| Thou waters that encompass us! |
| Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep! |
| Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all, |
Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all,
incessant!
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Thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless,
calm,
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| Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy, |
| How ill to e’er forget thee! |
| For I too have forgotten, |
(Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture,
wealth, inventions, civilization,)
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Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power,
ye mighty, elemental throes,
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In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is
buoy’d.
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