To a Suicide

How did you like your grave last night?
Did you sleep well, my friend?
There was cover enough for you, I know,
For over the earth was laid the snow;
And only a while did the wind blow,
Or the trees bend.

How did you like the grave you made,
To slip into from life?
Had it the quiet that you sought?
The silence, free of sound and thought?
The isolation undistraught
By the old strife?

And was it empty, as you believed,
Of sense, of soul, of God?
Was there no reckoning—or rue?
Were you with all at last quite through?
Nothing to want? nothing to do?
Only the clod?

Or was there Something there which bade
You rise and walk afar?
Out of the shroud, out of the flesh,
Out of earth's soul-tripping mesh,
Rise and start with strength afresh
On a new star?

That were impossible, you thought—
Sure but of sleeping well.
Yet while a bud awakes in May,
While darkness blossoms into day,
While life seems more than atom-sway,
Who can tell?