BLESSED the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead
Not passed, but perfected:
Who tower up to mystical full bloom
From self, as from a known alchemic tomb;
Who out of wrong
Run forth with laughter and a broken thong;
Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant
Of peace anticipant;
Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now,
Unbound from foot to brow,
Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful
As sun-born colours of a forest pool
Where Autumn sees
The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees.
Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost
As any chantry ghost,
How sight of these, in hermitage or mart,
Makes glad a wistful heart!
For life's apologetics read most true
In spirits risen anew,
Like larks in air
To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair,
And who from yonder parapet
Scorn every mortal fret,
And rain their sweet bewildering staves
Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves.
If thus to have trod and left the wormy way
Makes men so wondrous gay,
So stripped and free and potently alive,
Who would not his infirmity survive,
And bathe in victory, and come to be
As blithe as ye,
Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give;
Turn not away, too fugitive:
But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street,
And sit with us at meat,
And of your courtesy, on us unwise
Fix oft those purer eyes,
Till in ourselves who love them dwell
The same sure light ineffable:
Till they who walk with us in after years
Forgetting time and tears
(As we with you), shall sing all day instead:
"How blessed are the Dead!"