Christopher Pearse Cranch

Sonnet XXXIII

Life and Death. 5.

 
YET in all facts of sense life stands revealed;
And from a thousand symbols hope may take
Its charter to escape the Stygian lake,
And find existence in an ampler field.
The streams by winter’s icy breath congealed
Flow when the voices of the spring awake.
The electric current lives when tempests break
The wires. The chemic energies unsealed
By sudden change, in other forms survive.
The senses cheat us where the mind corrects
Their partial verdict. More than all, the heart—
The heart cold science counts not, is alive—
Of the undivided soul that vital part
Her microscopic eye in vain dissects.
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