Beyond the Shadow and Other Poems (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888. Excerpt: ... BEYOND THE SHADOW. AFTER DEATH. I. A VOICK FROM ABOVE. Where am I?--Do I live?--When yesternight, Even as the tide went out 'neath paling stars, My fevered eyes closed wearily, I caught In the last gleam of fading consciousness, The whispered words, "'T is over, --he is dead " And yet, --oh strange --these eyes are open now, And painless lift their lids --I gaze around, --I turn my head, --I see and feel and touch A hand, an arm, --beneath me trunk and limbs More light, more fine, yet not all unlike those That shall be laid away beneath the ground, Which sometimes proved a burden, weighing down The spirit with their cumbrance; yet more days Filled me with a brave sense of joy and power, When lustily, in full, free swing they sported In the glad earthly sunshine. And is this That second better world, whereof so much Was said and preached and sung to us below?--This leaden, low-hung, murky sky, but cleft By a dull bar of orange far beyond, --This heaving, turbid sea, whose fretful waves Chafe the bleak shore, and this gray, barren rock Whereon I lie?--nude, without hope, alone, --Even as ten thousand centuries ago The first created man was helpless cast On that rude nether world, whence but so late I was translated hither. Ah, look there A sight no living eye has ever seen --In the dim distance, their blurred outlines dark Against that tawny bar across the sky, A cloud of shadowy shapes, adrift, awhirl, Like seething vapors lashed by wind and rain, --Thousands on thousands, a vast, countless throng, A shifting, writhing, mighty multitude Of human forms that endless pass and pass Departed spirits like myself, past doubt, And like myself, here, to their own surprise, Clothed in some semblance of their earthly garb, And finer substance. Ah, and hark there rises, Di...