An Invite to Eternity

Wilt thou go with me, sweet maid,
Say maiden wilt thou go with me?
Through the valley depths of shade
Of night and dark obscurity
Where the path hath lost its way
Where the sun forgets the day
Where there's nor life nor light to see
Sweet maiden wilt thou come with me?

Where stones will turn to flooding streams,
Where plains will rise like ocean waves,
Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And mountains darken into caves.
Say maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through this sad nonidentity
Where parents live and are forgot
And sisters live and know us not.

Say maiden, wilt thou go with me,
In the strange death of life to be,
To live in death and be the same
Without this life or home or name
At once to be and not to be,
That was, and is not, yet to see
Things pass like shadows and the sky,
Above, belows, around us lie.

The land of shadows wilt thou trace
And look nor know each other's face.
The present mixed with reasons gone,
And past and present all as one.
Say maiden, can thy life be led
To join the living to the dead?
Then trace thy footsteps on with me,
We're wed to one eternity.

-- John Clare