The Life Beyond

Rupert Brooke

He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
 Who held the end was Death.  He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
 Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens.  He lies;
 And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch.  No life is in that land,
 Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
 Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
 Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse’s neck.

I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It’s dead.  Alone, most strangely, I live on.

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