At The End

By Nora May French

Tremblingly and spent I ran and fell,
And ran again, a sorrow made me fleet.
For very fear its shape I could not tell--
The briars tore my feet.

In broken flight across the cruel land,
So weary was I that I only smiled
When, swift and strong, a tender, mighty hand
 Upraised me like a child.

"It was not you I feared," rejoiced, I cried,
(His touch had healed my hurts, no more they bled,)
"Life radiant, God has sent you to my side!"
"Nay, I am Death!" he said.

This painful poem exists in typescript, again in the papers of Helen French at the Bancroft.
-- Pamela Herr