The Two Mysteries

Sin the middle of the room, in its white coffin, lay the dead child, a nephew of the poet, Near it, in a great chair, sat Walt Whitman, surrounded by littlc ouesv and holding a beautiful little girl on hia lap. She looked wonderingly at the spcctacle of death, and then inquiringly into the old man's face. "You don't know what it is, do you, my dear?" said he, and added, "We don't either."] We know not what it is, dear, this Bleep 80 deep and still; The folded hand, the awf ui calm, the cheek so pale and chili; The lids that vvill not lift again, though we may cali and cali; The strange, white solitudo of peace that settlea over all. We know not what it means, dear, this desolate heart pain; This dread to take our daily way, and walk in it again; We know not to what other Bphere the loved who leave us go. Nor why we're left to wonder still, nor why we do not know. But this we know: Our loved and dead, if they sliould come this day - Should come and ask us, "What is life?" not one of us could say. Life ia a inystery as deep as ever death can be; Yet oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and seel Then might they say - these vanished ones - and blessed is tho thought, "So death is sweet to us, beloved! though we may show you naught; We may not to the quick reveal the mystery of death- Ye cannot tell us, if ye would, the mystery of breath." The child who enters life comee not with knowledge or intent. So those who enter death must go as little chüdren sent. Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead; And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead.