THANATOPSIS
to him who in the love of nature holds
communion with her visible forms, she speaks
a various language; for his gayer hours
she has a voice of gladness and a smile
and eloquence of baauty, and she glides
into his darker musing with a mild
and healing sympathy that steals away
their sharpness ere he is aware. when thoughts
of the last bitter hour come like a blight
over thy spirit, and sad images.
of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
and breathless darkness, and the narrow house
make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart
go forth under the open sky and list
to nature's teachings while from all around
earth and her waters, and the depths of air
comes a still voice: yet a few days, and thee
the all-beholding sun shall see no more
in all his course, nor yet in the cold ground
where thy pale form was laid with many tears
nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist
thy image, earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
thine individual being, shalt thou go
to mix forever with the elements,
to be a brother to the insensible rock
and to the sluggish clod which the rudes swain
turns with his share and treads upon. the oak
shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould
yet not to thine eternal resting-place
shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
couch more magnificent. thou shall lie down
with patriarchs of the infant world- with kings
the powerful of the earth- the wise, the good,
fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
all in one mighty sepulchre. the hills
rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales
stratching in pensive quietness between;
the venerable woods- rivers that move
in majesty, and the complaining brooks
that make the meadows green; and, poured round all
old ocean's gray and melancholy waste-
are but the solemn decorations all
of the great tomb of man. the golden sun.
the planets, all the infinite host of heaven
are shining on the sad abodes of death,
through the still lapse of ages. all that tread
the globe are but a handful to the tribes
that slumber in its bosom. take the wings
of morning, pierce tha barcan wilderness,
or lose thself in the continouos woods
where rolls the oregon, and hears no sound,
save his own dashings--yet the dead are there
and millions in those solitudes, since first
the flight of years began, have laid them down
in their last sleep- the dead reign there alone
so shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
in silence from the living, and no friend
take note of thy departure? all that breathe
will share thy destiny. the gay will laugh
when thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
plod on, and each one as before will chase
his favorate phantom; yet all these shall leave
their mirth and their employments shall come
and make their bed with thee. as the long train
of ages slides away, the sons of men
the youth in lifes green spring and he who goes
in the full strangth of years, matron and maid,
the speechless babe, and the gray headed man
shall on by one be gathered to thy side
by those who in their turn shall follow them.
so libe that when thy summons comes to join
the innumerable caravan which moves
to that mysterious realm where each shall take
his chamber in the silent halls of daeth,
thou go not,like the quarry-slave at night,
scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
like on who wraps the drapery of his couch
about him and lias down to pleasant dreams
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angelonse10
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