Árdís - 01.01.1958, Page 14

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ÁRDÍ S
Like as some lonely flower
Upspringing from the ground
With growth most fair and
stainless
At hour of morn in found:
But sudden in a moment
Before the scythe it bends
With all its coloured blossom—
So swiftly man’s life ends.
Youth’s eager bands are treading
Death’s dark mysterious road:
Age the same way is going
Dragging life’s heavy load.
No man the right has captured
To bid life’s moments stay;
The doom of all is parting,
For all must pass away.
Death may in truth be likened
(For such it seems to me)
To some wild heedless mower
Who mows most watonly:
Grass, reed and sedge; but also
The fairest blooms of earth,
With beauty of the roses,
He deems as of no worth.
The life of man runs onward
Without a moment’s rest,
Till death with grim embraces
O’erpowers the worst and best:
The great world’s many high-
ways
To one point bring us all,
Where, willing or unwilling,
The traveller meets his fall.
Death will not yield one instant
To legal rights, or power;
Nor can fair payment purchase
Respite for one brief hour;
All men he treats as equal,
Though high or low their
state;
Nor prayers nor threats can alter
His heart’s remorseless hate.
Men walk in fear and error,
For they know not at all
On whom, or at what season,
Or where Death’s stroke will
fall;
One is the mode of entrance
To this harsh world of strife;
Many the modes of exit,
By which men leave this life.
The power of Death has
conquered
All in this world of care;
How dare I to imagine,
That me alone he’ll spare?
For Adam’s fallen nature
Passed into me at birth,
And thus I have deserved
To turn again to earth.
Neither by claim nor seizure
This life on earth I own;
United with my body
My soul is but a loan;
It lies in God’s discretion
To call in His own — my
breath,
To call in His possession
He sends His herald, Death.