All her light sorrows thro' the breast and throat

Whose death-cry crowned me God and Lord?

Yea, God and Lord! Had tears not purged my sight?

I saw the myriad gates of Light

Opening and shutting in each way-side flower,

And like a warder in the gleam of each,

Death, whispering in some strange eternal speech

To every passing hour.

The second Gate? Was I not born to pass

A million? Though the skies be brass

And the earth iron, shall I not win thro' all?

Shall I who made the infinite heavens my mark

Shrink from this first wild horror of the dark,

These formless gulfs, these glooms that crawl?

Never was mine that easy faithless hope

Which makes all life one flowery slope

To heaven! Mine be the vast assaults of doom,

Trumpets, defeats, red anguish, age-long strife,

Ten million deaths, ten million gates to life,

The insurgent heart that bursts the tomb.

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