| |
| BY the blue taper’s trembling light, | |
| No more I waste the wakeful night, | |
| Intent with endless view to pore | |
| The schoolmen and the sages o’er: | |
| Their books from wisdom widely stray, | 5 |
| Or point at best the longest way. | |
| I’ll seek a readier path, and go | |
| Where wisdom’s surely taught below. | |
| How deep yon azure dyes the sky, | |
| Where orbs of gold unnumbered lie, | 10 |
| While through their ranks in silver pride | |
| The nether crescent seems to glide! | |
| The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe | |
| The lake is smooth and clear beneath, | |
| Where once again the spangled show | 15 |
| Descends to meet our eyes below. | |
| The grounds which on the right aspire, | |
| In dimness from the view retire: | |
| The left presents a place of graves, | |
| Whose wall the silent water laves. | 20 |
| That steeple guides thy doubtful sight | |
| Among the livid gleams of night. | |
| There pass, with melancholy state, | |
| By all the solemn heaps of fate, | |
| And think, as softly-sad you tread | 25 |
| Above the venerable dead, | |
| ‘Time was, like thee they life possest, | |
| And time shall be, that thou shalt rest.’ | |
| Those graves, with bending osier bound, | |
| That nameless heave the crumbled ground | 30 |
| Quick to the glancing thought disclose, | |
| Where toil and poverty repose. | |
| The flat smooth stones that bear a name, | |
| The chisel’s slender help to fame, | |
| (Which ere our set of friends decay | 35 |
| Their frequent steps may wear away,) | |
| A middle race of mortals own, | |
| Men, half ambitious, all unknown. | |
| The marble tombs that rise on high, | |
| Whose dead in vaulted arches lie, | 40 |
| Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones, | |
| Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones, | |
| These, all the poor remains of state, | |
| Adorn the rich, or praise the great, | |
| Who, while on earth in fame they live, | 45 |
| Are senseless of the fame they give. | |
| Hah! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades, | |
| The bursting earth unveils the shades! | |
| All slow, and wan, and wrapped with shrouds, | |
| They rise in visionary crowds, | 50 |
| And all with sober accents cry, | |
| ‘Think, mortal, what it is to die.’ | |
| Now from yon black and funeral yew, | |
| That bathes the charnel-house with dew, | |
| Methinks I hear a voice begin; | 55 |
| (Ye ravens, cease your croaking din; | |
| Ye tolling clocks, no time resound | |
| O’er the long lake and midnight ground!) | |
| It sends a peal of hollow groans, | |
| Thus speaking from among the bones. | 60 |
| ‘When men my scythe and darts supply, | |
| How great a king of fears am I! | |
| They view me like the last of things: | |
| They make, and then they dread, my stings. | |
| Fools! if you less provoked your fears, | 65 |
| No more my spectre form appears. | |
| Death’s but a path that must be trod, | |
| If man would ever pass to God; | |
| A port of calms, a state of ease | |
| From the rough rage of swelling seas. | 70 |
| ‘Why then thy flowing sable stoles, | |
| Deep pendant cypress, mourning poles, | |
| Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds, | |
| Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds, | |
| And plumes of black, that, as they tread, | 75 |
| Nod o’er the scutcheons of the dead? | |
| ‘Nor can the parted body know, | |
| Nor wants the soul, these forms of woe | |
| As men who long in prison dwell, | |
| With lamps that glimmer round the cell, | 80 |
| Whene’er their suffering years are run, | |
| Spring forth to greet the glittering sun: | |
| Such joy, though far transcending sense, | |
| Have pious souls at parting hence. | |
| On earth, and in the body placed, | 85 |
| A few, and evil years they waste; | |
| But when their chains are cast aside | |
| See the glad scene unfolding wide, | |
| Clap the glad wing, and tower away, | |
| And mingle with the blaze of day.’ | 90 |
| |
