FullReads

“Around me stretch’d the slumbers of the dead,
Whereof the silence ached upon my ear;
More and more noiseless did I make my tread,
And yet its echoes chill’d my heart with fear.

“The former men of every age and place,
From all their wand’rings gather’d, round me lay;
The dust of wither’d Empires did I trace,
And stood ‘mid Generations pass’d away.

“I saw whole cities, that in flood or fire,
Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath;
Whole armies whom a day beheld expire,
Swept by ten thousands to the arms of Death.

“I saw the old world’s white and wave-swept bones
A giant heap of creatures that had been;
Far and confused the broken skeletons
Lay strewn beyond mine eye’s remotest ken.

“Death’s various shrines–the Urn, the Stone, the Lamp–
Were scatter’d round, confused, amid the dead;
Symbols and Types were mould’ring in the damp,
Their shapes were waning and their meaning fled.

“Unspoken tongues, perchance in praise or woe,
Were character’d on tablets Time had swept;
And deep were half their letters hid below
The thick small dust of those they once had wept.

“No hand was here to wipe the dust away,
No reader of the writing traced beneath;
No spirit sitting by its form of clay;
No sigh nor sound from all the heaps of Death.

“One place alone had ceased to hold its prey;
A form had press’d it and was there no more;
The garments of the Grave beside it lay,
Where once they wrapp’d him on the rocky floor.

“He only with returning footsteps broke
Th’ eternal calm wherewith the Tomb was bound;
Among the sleeping Dead alone He woke,
And bless’d with outstretch’d hands the host around.

“Well is it that such blessing hovers here,
To soothe each sad survivor of the throng,
Who haunt the portals of the solemn sphere,
And pour their woe the loaded air along.

“They to the verge have follow’d what they love,
And on th’ insuperable threshold stand;
With cherish’d names its speechless calm reprove,
And stretch in the abyss their ungrasp’d hand.

“But vainly there they seek their soul’s relief,
And of th’ obdurate Grave its prey implore;
Till Death himself shall medicine their grief,
Closing their eyes by those they wept before.

“All that have died, the Earth’s whole race, repose
Where Death collects his Treasures, heap on heap;
O’er each one’s busy day, the nightshades close;
Its Actors, Sufferers, Schools, Kings, Armies–sleep.”

The lines in italics are of the highest quality, both in thought and word; the allusion to Him who by dying abolished death, seems to us wonderfully fine–sudden, simple,–it brings to our mind the lines already quoted from Vaughan:–

“But there was One
Who search’d it quite through to and fro,
And then returning like the Sun,
Discover’d all that there is done.”

What a rich line this is!

“And pour their woe the loaded air along.”

“The insuperable threshold!”

Do our readers remember the dying Corinne’s words? Je mourrais seule–au reste, ce moment se passe de secours; nos amis ne peuvent nous suivre que jusqu’au seuil de la vie. La, commencent des pensees dont le trouble et la profondeur ne sauraient se confier.

We have only space for one more–verses entitled “Heart’s-Ease.”

HEART’S-EASE.

“Oh, Heart’s-Ease, dost thou lie within that flower?
How shall I draw thee thence?–so much I need
The healing aid of thine enshrined power
To veil the past–and bid the time good speed!

“I gather it–it withers on my breast;
The heart’s-ease dies when it is laid on mine;
Methinks there is no shape by Joy possess’d,
Would better fare than thou, upon that shrine.

“Take from me things gone by–oh! change the past–
Renew the lost–restore me the decay’d,–
Bring back the days whose tide has ebb’d so fast–
Give form again to the fantastic shade!