THANATOPSIS

T

O him who in the love of

Nature holds
Communion with her visible

form, she speaks
A various language; for his

gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings 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 airComes a still voice:

a

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, And, lost each human trace, surrender

ing up 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 rude

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 Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt 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 Stretching 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

wasteAre 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 the Barcan wilder

ness, Or lose thyself in the continuous 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 with

draw 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 His favorite phantom; yet all these shall

leave Their mirth and their employments, and

shall come And make their bed with thee. As the

long train Of ages glides away, the sons of menThe youth in life's fresh spring, and he

who goes

In the full strength of years, matron and

maid, The speechless babe and the gray-headed

manShall one by one be gathered to thy

side, By those, who in their turn shall follow

them.

So live, 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 death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at

night,