On Death The pale, the cold and the moony smile Which the meteor beam of a starless night sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle Ere the dawning of morns undoubted light Is the flame of life so fickle and wan That flits round our steps till their strength is gone O man! Hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way And the billows of cloud that around thee roll shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day Where heavan and hell shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny. This world is the nurse of all we know This world is the mother of all we feel and the coming of death is a fearful blow to a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel When all that we know or feel or see shall pass like an unreal mystery The secret things of the grave are there Where all but this frame must surely be Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear All that is great and all that is strange In the boundless realm of unending change. Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? Who paineth the shadows that are beneath the wide winding caves of the peopled tomb? Or untieth the hopes of what shall be With the fears and the love for that which we can see? Percy shelly