o I shall rest
Well in my grave."

This is the message they send,
Warm with your ultimate breath;
Saying, "And this is the end;
She is the bride but of death."
Is death the worst of all things?
What but a bursting of bands,
Then to the First of All Things
Stretching out hands!

Under the grass and the snow
You will sleep well till I come;
And you will feel me, I know,
Though you are motionless, dumb.
I shall speak low overhead--
You were so eager to hear--
And even though you are dead,
You will be near.

Dead, with the dew on your brow,
Dead, with the May in your face,
Dead: and here, true to my vow,
I, who have won in the race,
Weave you a chaplet of song
Wet with the spray and the rime
Blown from your love that was strong--
Stronger than Time.

IN WASTE PLACES

The new life is fief to the old life,
And giveth back pangs at the last;
The new strife is like to the old strife
A token and tear of the Past.
We change, but the changes are only
New forms of the old forms again,
We die and some spaces are lonely,
But men live in lives of new men.

We hate, and old wrongs lift their faces,
To fill up the ranks of the new;
We love, and the early love's graces
Are signs of the false and the true;
We clasp the white hands that are given
To greet us in devious ways,
But meet the old sins, all unshriven,
To sadden the burden of days.

Though we lose the green leaves of the first days,
Though the vineyards be trampled and red,
We know, in the gloom of our worst days,
That the dead are not evermore dead:
December is only December,
A space, not the infinite whole;
Though the hearthstone bear but the one ember,
There still is the fire of the soul.

The end comes as c