Constancy

The shadows that companion meFrom chronicles and poetryMore constant and substantial areThan these my men familiar,Who draw with me uncertain breathA little while this side of death;For you, my friend, may fail to keepTo-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deepThe motions mutable that giveTo flesh its brief prerogative,And in the pleasant hours we makeTogether for devotion’s sake,Always the testament I seeThat is our twin mortality.But those from the recorded pageKeep an eternal pilgrimage.They stedfastly inhabit hereWith no mortality to fear,And my communion with themAils not in the mind’s stratagemAgainst the sudden blow, the dateThat once must fall unfortunate.They fret not nor persuade, and whenThese graduates I entertain,I grieve not that I too must fallAs you, my friend, to funeral,But rather find example thereThat, when my boughs of time are bare,And nothing more the body’s chanceGoverns my careful circumstance,I shall, upon that later birth,Walk in immortal fields of earth.