Human Life[;] On the Denial of Immortality

1. 1If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom
2. 2Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
3. 3As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
4. 4Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
5. 5But are their whole of being! If the breath[425:2]
6. 6Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
7. 7If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
8. 8O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
9. 9Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!
10. 10Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
11. 11Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
12. 12Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
13. 13She formed with restless hands unconsciously.
14. 14Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!
15. 15If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
16. 16Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
17. 17The counter-weights!--Thy laughter and thy tears
18. 18Mean but themselves, each fittest to create
19. 19And to repay the other! Why rejoices
20. 20Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good?
21. 21Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood?
22. 22Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,
23. 23Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf,
24. 24That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?
25. 25Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
26. 26These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
27. 27Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
28. 28Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none;
29. 29Thy being's being is contradiction.