Immortality

No tortured viaduct of pain

No alley from the wasted land

Time, precious Time, has purchased better things

A glimpse of sweet Eternity is thine

A golden epitaph – a Shrine to immortality –

Life in perpetuity – all this and more

Is there to be taken

And thence with gilded wings to fly

On a burnished steed

Made strong by heaven’s fire

Mount it well for never shall it fail thee

Ride into the night – and gallop through the day –

Pause at daybreak’s glimmer and drink from Hades’ well

But only for an instant for that shall ever be replenished

Now – and now again drink deep the nectar of survival

Even after time has stopped and wiped from its brow

All man’s ills

All humanity’s woes

All the timeless promises of an empty hope

That this thing called life has permanence in

Mortal currency

Begone with such idolatory!

For matter means only this –

To live and to experience God in all His forms

No more than this can mortal existence offer

But beyond that – reality

Beyond that – peace

And beyond that – well there in its truest form

Is the dwelling place of Divinity Herself.

So tread ye on down there and upwards look

To another place – another time –

And find it there too if you can

For it is ever present – this Now in which we live

Thank God for Immortality

Whose everlasting sanctity is thine.

(This was written by a poet and dramatist who lived in the seventeenth century, possibly in collaboration with another poet.)


© Richard Lawrence 2004