For the Living

Poem for the Day

For the Living
by Edgar Albert Guest

If you like a brother here, 
Tell him so; 
If you hold his friendship dear, 
Let him know; 
All the roses that you spread 
On his bier when he is dead 
Are not worth one kind word said 
Years ago.

You can help a brother now
If you will 
Smooth the furrows from his brow; 
You can kill
The despair that's in his heart 
With a word, and ease the smart. 
So why stand you now apart 
Keeping still?

You can help a brother when
He is here; 
He would hold your praises then 
Very dear.
But absurdly still you stay 
And withhold what you could say 
That would cheer him on his way 
For his bier.

What, I wonder, if the dead
Saw and heard 
What is done and what is said 
Afterward,
Would they utter in reply? 
Would they smile and ask us why, 
When the time to help was nigh, 
No one stirred?

'Keep your roses for the living,'
They would say, 
'Waste no time in praises giving 
Us today;
Strew some living brother's way so, 
If you like another, say so, 
For the thing that now you praise so 
Is but clay.'