Epigraph:
They are alive and well somewhere,/ The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,/ And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait/ At the end to arrest it,/ And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. //All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, /And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
-Walt Witman
That all should change to ghost and glance and gleam, /And so transmuted stand beyond all change, /And we be poised between the unmoving dream /And the sole moving moment - this is strange. /Past all contrivance, word, or image, or sound, /Or silence, to express, that we who fall /Through time's long ruin should weave this phantom ground /And in its ghostly borders gather all. /There incorruptible the child plays still/ The lover waits beside the trysting tree /The good hour spans its heaven, and the ill, /Rapt in their silent immortality. /As in commemoration of a day /That having been can never pass away.
-Edwin Muir
For never was I not, nor thou, nor these kings; /Nor will any of us cease to be hereafter.
-Bhagavad-Gita
