On Death

The pale, the cold and the moony smile 
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle
Ere the dawning of morns undoubted light
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone

O man! Hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way 
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day
Where heavan and hell shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know 
This world is the mother of all we feel
and the coming of death is a fearful blow
to a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel
When all that we know or feel or see
shall pass like an unreal mystery

The secret things of the grave are there
Where all but this frame must surely be
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change. 

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who paineth the shadows that are beneath 
the wide winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or untieth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we can see?

		Percy shelly