Showing posts with label secular poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secular poetry. Show all posts

Monday 13 June 2016

A Future Thought.

        A poem, and why not? This one I found in an old newspaper, Free Society. An American paper, published in Chicago, with the sub heading, A Periodical of Anarchist Thought, Work and Literature, Vol.IX, No. 30, dated November 30th, 1902. It states that the author is unknown, so if you think you can throw some light on this, I'd be delighted to hear from you. After all, the poet deserves some recognition.

A Future Thought.

When o’er my cold and lifeless clay
The parting words of love are said,
And friends and kindred meet to pay
Their last fond tribute to the dead,
Let no stern priests with solemn drone
A formal liturgy intone-----
Whose creed is foreign to my own.

Let not a word be whispered there
In pit for my unbelief,
Or sorrow that I could not share
The views that gave their souls relief.
My faith to me is no less dear,
Nor less convincing and sincere
Than theirs, so rigid and austere.

Let no stale words of Church-born song,
Float out upon the silent air
To prove my implication wrong
The soul of her then lying there----
Why should such words be glibly sung
O’er one whose lively tongue
such empty phrases never hung.

But rather let the faithful few
Whose hearts so close were knit to mine
That they with time the dearer grew,
Assemble at the day’s decline.
And while the golden sunbeams fall
In floods of light upon my pall
Let them in softened tones recall,

Some tender memory of the dead----
Some virtuous act, some word of power
Which I, perchance, have done or said,
By loved ones treasured to that hour,
Recount the deeds which I admired,
The motives which my soul inspired,
The hopes by which my heart was fired.

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