NOTHING THAT CAN DIE, a poem

NOTHING that we deem can die
     Has any thought of death:
The mortal thing, without a sigh—
Without reproachful plaint or cry—
     Yields scarcely conscious breath;
The coming sleep to it the same
As that from which it all-unknowing came.

But spirit cannot so resign
     A hope that o'er the depths of sorrow
Like to a star remains: a sign
That strengthens, by its beam divine,
     To-day with promise of To-morrow!
Nay; longing, vital, and foreseeing,
Itself becomes a pledge of deathless being.

"Nothing that can die" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Harper's Monthly Magazine (July 1914) and Poems (1916) Volume II.