"Who is he that calls the dead? "Is it thou, Oh King? Behold "Bloodless are these limbs, and cold: "Such are mine: and such shall be "Thine, to-morrow, when with me: "Ere the coming day is done, "Such shalt thou be, such thy son. "Fare thee well, but for a day; "Then we mix our mouldering clay. (( Thou, thy race, lie pale and low, "Pierced by shafts of many a bow; "And the falchion by thy side, "To thy heart, thy hand shall guide: "Crownless, breathless, headless fall, "Son and sire, the house of Saul!" "ALL IS VANITY, SAITH THE PREACHER." I. FAME, wisdom, love, and power were mine, My goblets blush'd from every vine, I sunn'd my heart in beauty's eyes, II. I strive to number o'er what days Remembrance can discover, Which all that life or earth displays There rose no day, there roll'd no hour Of pleasure unembittered; And not a trapping deck'd my power That gall'd not while it glittered. III. The serpent of the field, by art And spells, is won from harming; But that which coils around the heart, Oh! who hath power of charming? It will not list to wisdom's lore, WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY. .I. WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY, ' Ah, whither strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay, But leaves its darken'd dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace By steps each planet's heavenly way? Or fill at once the realms of space, A thing of eyes, that all survey? II. Eternal, boundless, undecay'd, A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all in earth, or skies display'd, Shall it survey, shall it recal: Each fainter trace that memory holas So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the soul beholds, And all, that was, at once appears. III. Before Creation peopled earth, Its eye shall roll through chaos back; And where the furthest heaven had birth, And where the future mars or makes, Fix'd in its own eternity. IV. Above or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear, |