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A THRENODY: IN MEMORY OF ALBERT DARASZ, SELECTION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O blessed dead! Beyond all earthly pains
Last Line: Perceive the future. Lend us of thy force!
Alternate Author Name(s): Spartacus


O BLESSED Dead! beyond all earthly pains:
Beyond the calculation of low needs;
Thy growth no longer chok'd by earthly weeds;
Thy spirit clear'd from care's corrosive chains.
O blessed Dead! O blessed Life-in-death,
Transcending all life's poor decease of breath!

Thou walkest not upon some desolate moor
In the storm-wildering midnight, when thine own,
Thy trusted friend, hath lagg'd and left thee lone.
He knows not poverty who, being poor,
Hath still one friend. But he who fain had kept
The comrade whom his zeal hath over-stept.

Thou sufferest not the friendly cavilling
Impugning motive; nor that worse than spear
Of foeman, -- biting doubt of one most dear
Laid in thy deepest heart, a barbed sting
Never to be withdrawn. For we were friends:
Alas! and neither to the other bends.

Thou hast escap'd continual falling off
Of old companions; and that aching void
Of the proud heart which has been over-buoy'd
With friendship's idle breath; and now the scoff
Of failure even as idly passeth by
Thy poor remains: -- Thou soaring through the sky.

Knowing no more that malady of hope --
The sickness of deferral, thou canst look
Thorough the heavens and, healthily patient, brook
Delay, -- defeat. For in thy vision's scope
Most distant cometh. We might see it too,
But dizzying faintness overveils our view.

And when disaster flings us in the dust,
Or when we wearily drop on the highway-side,
Or when in prison'd, exil'd depths the pride
Of suffering bows its head, as oft it must,
We cannot, looking on thy wasted corse,
Perceive the future. Lend us of thy force!





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