Not Understood and Other Poems/Annihilation

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ANNIHILATION.

Tis not true! Great Sire, it cannot be  That this bright ray of life we call the soul—This quenchless flame of immortality,  Emblazoned on Thy grand eternal scroll—Was kindled in its mortal lamp by Thee  To find within the grave its final goal.
Oh! bastard creed, conceived in vilest womb  Of meanest earth, how poor thou makest man:A living atom, fattening for the tomb,  And struggling to its jaws as best he can,Heir unto nothing but chaotic gloom,  The puppet of a dark, designless plan.
Cold, dismal science, hatched within a clod,  And nursed for blank futurity, in vainThy teachers, with their substitute for God,  Proclaim that wrong shall change to right again.Why then are we the tillers of the sod?  Why do we sow if others reap the grain?
How shall the good to come repay the dead,  If mind or soul embodied, really diesTo live no more? The suff’ring millions fled,  With all their sorrows and with all their criesFor justice, find no solace in the bed  Of dreamless death from which they may not rise.
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Were death the climax, then ’twere better fate  To browse the peaceful hills, a careless beast,Or nestle with some tuneful feathered mate  In some green glade, nor look past Nature’s feastFor happiness, nor dream of future state,  Than be their king—the greatest, yet the least.
Shall all our dreamings of a brighter day—  Shall all our longings for a purer light,Shall all our aspirations end in clay?  Shall all our hopes be plunged in endless night,And shall the soul be blind for ever ? Nay!  Death cannot veil its strong celestial sight.
Annihilation! Philosophic lie!  Thou canst not rob us of our rightful claimTo share our Father’s mansion up on high;  God is a Spirit, and from Him we came.His breath is in us, it can never die;  Emancipation is death’s better name.
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