| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 1427. Life and Death |
| | | By Lilla Cabot Perry |
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| O YE who see with other eyes than ours, | |
| And speak with tongues we are too deaf to hear, | |
| Whose touch we cannot feel yet know ye near, | |
| When, with a sense of yet undreamed-of powers, | |
| We sudden pierce the cloud of sense that lowers, | 5 |
| Enwrapping us as ’t were our spirit’s tomb, | |
| And catch some sudden glory through the gloom, | |
| As Arctic sufferers dream of sun and flowers! | |
| Do ye not sometimes long for power to speak | |
| To our dull ears, and pierce their should of clay | 10 |
| With a loud cry, “Why, then, this grief at ‘death’? | |
| We are the living, you the dead to-day! | |
| This truth you soon shall see, dear hearts, yet weak, | |
| In God’s bright mirror cleared from mortal breath!” | |
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