BOOK THE THIRD.

Entroductory Lines to Book the Third.

TO THE GRAVE.

HEARKEN, O Grave! beneath me lying;
Hearken-my heart shall speak to thee!
I know not whose the dust supplying
Thy red and creeping progeny :
No stone is there; the swathing willow
Curtains alone the Sleeper's pillow.
But boots it who that couch may claim?
Thy homilies remain the same!

And round thee vibrates the unsolid
And soft air with a moral deep;
And voices vague, and disembodied,
O'er thee a fearful vigil keep.
Preacher and Prophet-to imbibe
Thy lore, itself the spirit husheth,
And swift and noiselessly, a tribe

Of Dreams into the Silence rusheth.

But dreams like his whose burning lips
Reveal'd the dread Apocalypse,
Glassing-though in a troublous mirror—
The dim but starry truths of Fate,
Weird shadows of that World of Terror
Or Love-to which thou art the Gate?

Tell me, O Grave!

When to thy slave

The black-robed laugher Death—

And to the Air, Earth, Fire, and Wave,
This dust resigns the breath;

Tell me, shall aught which may be poured
From my soul's gushing well,
Beyond thy reach awhile be stored,
And flow-my Chronicle?
Bearing upon its wave unbroken
A living-though no lofty-token
That I have loved my Race!

And that their tyrannies and terrors,

The monsters of their self-sought errors

Have had for me no grace?

That never flinch'd my fearless Scorn

With Folly in the field?

That to my naked heart was worn

"Man's Welfare' as its shield?

That-nor the Banner nor the Band

Which venal champions may defend