Looking down on Earth,
As from some distant heaven,
And seeing body after body drop and the life fly from it,
All day long and all night a host of the dead arising:
It seemed indeed a curious life, that life:
It seemed indeed a curious end, that death …

Then, here on Earth,
I sitting at this desk in this small room,
So thrillingly alive,
Yet soon to meet that fine decisive moment,
Pause in strange awe to think that what these others,
These hosts of dead, have passed through,
I too shall soon experience, down to the last grey detail:
Darkness, with secret gleams of a rising twilight beyond …

Not only these others (ah, that is strange enough!)
But I myself: all that I am,
To pass through the black process,
Turning away in agony from the sweetness of the sun and the crowds,
Renouncing all, with bitter dread and loathing:
Even as the babe in the womb, could it be conscious,
Would pass into the mystery of the world …

Ah, world, art then a womb?
Are we, the living, but the unborn children,
And is death birth?