Living in Eternity
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay endure.
—Robert Browning.
Death and All Good
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe, and I am not contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
The earth good, the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
—Walt Whitman.
Life, as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence where it comes on soundings.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Alternate Reading: I Timothy 6: 5-14.