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Dinah Maria Mulock - A Dream Of Resurrection
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SO heavenly beautiful it lay, 
It was less like a human corse 
Than that fair shape in which perforce 
A lost hope clothes itself alway. 

The dream showed very plain: the bed 
Where that known unknown face reposed,-- 
A woman`s face with eyelids closed, 
A something precious that was dead; 

A something, lost on this side life, 
By which the mourner came and stood, 
And laid down, ne`er to be indued, 
All flaunting robes of earthly strife; 

Shred off, like votive locks of hair, 
Youth`s ornaments of pride and strength, 
And cast them in their golden length 
The silence of that bier to share. 

No tears fell,--but with gazings long 
Lorn memory tried to print that face 
On the heart`s ever-vacant place, 
With a sun-finger, sharp and strong.-- 

Then kisses, dropping without sound, 
And solemn arms wound round the dead, 
And lifting from the natural bed 
Into the coffin`s strange new bound. 

Yet still no farewell, or belief 
In death, no more than one believes 
In some dread truth that sudden weaves 
The whole world in a shroud of grief. 

And still unanswered kisses; still 
Warm clingings to the image cold 
With an incredulous faith`s close fold, 
Creative in its fierce "I will." 

Hush,--hush! the marble eyelids move, 
The kissed lips quiver into breath: 
Avaunt, thou mockery of Death! 
Avaunt!--we are conquerors, I and Love. 

Corpse of dead Hope, awake, arise, 
A living Hope that only slept 
Until the tears thus overwept 
Had washed the blindness from our eyes. 

Come back into the upper day: 
Pluck off these cerements. Patient shroud, 
We`ll wrap thee as a garment proud 
Round the fair shape we thought was clay. 

Clasp, arms; cling, soul; eyes, drink anew 
The beauty that returns with breath: 
Faith, that out-loved this trance-like death, 
May see this resurrection too.
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