Time to Come: A Preparation Poem for Easter Sunday

Sunset on the Pacific

As I was looking for Resurrection poems to share with my Junior High Literature class, I happened upon this early Walt Whitman poem, pre-"Leaves of Grass." I thought it was an excellent preparatory poem for the Easter season. Whitman expresses well the shivering uncertainty we feel when the "black and pierceless pall" of our inescapable "future state" falls on us. Death is a tyrant, a judgement, and a curse. We stand in need of a mighty Savior, a Savior who can defeat Death itself in all its forms. Praise be to God, we have such a Savior in Christ the Lord!

"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself  [Jesus] likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through the fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery." Hebrews 2:14-15

 Time to Come

O, Death! a black and pierceless pall

Hangs round thee, and the future state;

No eye may see, no mind may grasp

That mystery of fate.

This brain, which now alternate throbs

With swelling hope and gloomy fear;

This heart, with all the changing hues,

That mortal passions bear—

This curious frame of human mould,

Where unrequited cravings play,

This brain, and heart, and wondrous form

Must all alike decay.

The leaping blood will stop its flow;

The hoarse death-struggle pass; the cheek

Lay bloomless, and the liquid tongue

Will then forget to speak.

The grave will take me; earth will close

O’er cold dull limbs and ashy face;

But where, O, Nature, where shall be

The soul’s abiding place?

Will it e’en live? For though its light

Must shine till from the body torn;

Then, when the oil of life is spent,

Still shall the taper burn?

O, powerless is this struggling brain

To rend the mighty mystery;

In dark, uncertain awe it waits

The common doom, to die.

- Walt Whitman