The pale, the cold, and the moony smile <br />Which the meteor beam of a starless night <br />Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, <br />Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, <br />Is the flame of life so fickle and wan <br />That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. <br /> <br />O man! hold thee on in courage of soul <br />Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way, <br />And the billows of clouds that around thee roll <br />Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, <br />Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free <br />To the universe of destiny. <br /> <br />This world is the nurse of all we know, <br />This world is the mother of all we feel, <br />And the coming of death is a fearful blow <br />To a brain unencompass'd by nerves of steel: <br />When all that we know, or feel, or see, <br />Shall pass like an unreal mystery. <br /> <br />The secret things of the grave are there, <br />Where all but this frame must surely be, <br />Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear <br />No longer will live, to hear or to see <br />All that is great and all that is strange <br />In the boundless realm of unending change. <br /> <br />Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? <br />Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? <br />Who painteth the shadows that are beneath <br />The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb? <br />Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be <br />With the fears and the love for that which we see?<br /><br />Percy Bysshe Shelley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-death/
