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And I fear not, thy fair soul ever
Will smile as thy image smiled;
It had fled with a sudden shiver,
And thy body lay beguiled.
Let the flowers and thy beauty perish;
Let them go to the ancient dust.
But the hopes that the children cherish,
They are the Father’s trust.

3.

A great church in an empty square,
A place of echoing tones;
Feet pass not oft enough to wear
The grass between the stones.

The jarring sounds that haunt its gates,
Like distant thunders boom;
The boding heart half-listening waits,
As for a coming doom.

The door stands wide, the church is bare,
Oh, horror, ghastly, sore!
A gulf of death, with hideous stare,
Yawns in the earthen floor;

As if the ground had sunk away
Into a void below:
Its shapeless sides of dark-hued clay
Hang ready aye to go.

I am myself a horrid grave,
My very heart turns grey;
This charnel-hole,–will no one save
And force my feet away?

The changing dead are there, I know,
In terror ever new;
Yet down the frightful slope I go,
That downward goeth too.

Beneath the caverned floor I hie,
And seem, with anguish dull,
To enter by the empty eye
Into a monstrous skull.

Stumbling on what I dare not guess,
And wading through the gloom,
Less deep the shades my eyes oppress,
I see the awful tomb.

My steps have led me to a door,
With iron clenched and barred;
Grim Death hides there a ghastlier store,
Great spider in his ward.

The portals shake, the bars are bowed,
As if an earthy wind
That never bore a leaf or cloud
Were pressing hard behind.

They shake, they groan, they outward strain.
What sight, of dire dismay
Will freeze its form upon my brain,
And turn it into clay?

They shake, they groan, they bend, they crack;
The bars, the doors divide:
A flood of glory at their back
Hath burst the portals wide.

Flows in the light of vanished days,
The joy of long-set moons;
The flood of radiance billowy plays,
In sweet-conflicting tunes.

The gulf is filled with flashing tides,
An awful gulf no more;
A maze of ferns clothes all its sides,
Of mosses all its floor.

And, floating through the streams, appear
Such forms of beauty rare,
As every aim at beauty here
Had found its would be there.

I said: ‘Tis well no hand came nigh,
To turn my steps astray;
‘Tis good we cannot choose but die,
That life may have its way.

4.

Before I sleep, some dreams draw nigh,
Which are not fancy mere;
For sudden lights an inward eye,
And wondrous things appear.

Thus, unawares, with vision wide,
A steep hill once I saw,
In faint dream lights, which ever hide
Their fountain and their law.

And up and down the hill reclined
A host of statues old;
Such wondrous forms as you might find
Deep under ancient mould.

They lay, wild scattered, all along,
And maimed as if in fight;
But every one of all the throng
Was precious to the sight.

Betwixt the night and hill they ranged,
In dead composure cast.
As suddenly the dream was changed,
And all the wonder past.

The hill remained; but what it bore
Was broken reedy stalks,
Bent hither, thither, drooping o’er,
Like flowers o’er weedy walks.

For each dim form of marble rare,
Bent a wind-broken reed;
So hangs on autumn-field, long-bare,
Some tall and straggling weed.

The autumn night hung like a pall,
Hung mournfully and dead;
And if a wind had waked at all,
It had but moaned and fled.