Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Irony
By Louis Untermeyer
W
The ones with neither sight nor breath!
Eternity is thrust upon
A bit of earth, a senseless stone.
A grain of dust, a casual clod
Receives the greatest gift of God.
A pebble in the roadway lies—
It never dies.
Is growing on their graves to-day;
The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow
Eternally will come and go.
There is no kind of death to kill
The sands that lie so meek and still.…
But Man is great and strong and wise—
And so he dies.