Irony-Louis Untermeyer

Why are the things that have no death

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.

The grass our fathers cut away

Is growing on their graves today;

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.