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HER DEATH
’T IS a stern and startling thing to think | |
| How often mortality stands on the brink | |
| Of its grave without any misgiving: | |
| And yet in this slippery world of strife, | |
| In the stir of human bustle so rife, | 5 |
| There are daily sounds to tell us that Life | |
| Is dying, and Death is living! | |
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| Ay, Beauty the Girl, and Love the Boy, | |
| Bright as they are with hope and joy, | |
| How their souls would sadden instanter, | 10 |
| To remember that one of those wedding bells, | |
| Which ring so merrily through the dells, | |
| Is the same that knells | |
| Our last farewells, | |
| Only broken into a canter! | 15 |
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| But breath and blood set doom at nought: | |
| How little the wretched Countess thought, | |
| When at night she unloos’d her sandal, | |
| That the Fates had woven her burial cloth, | |
| And that Death, in the shape of a Death’s Head Moth, | 20 |
| Was fluttering round her candle! | |
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| As she look’d at her clock of or-molu, | |
| For the hours she had gone so wearily through | |
| At the end of a day of trial, | |
| How little she saw in her pride of prime | 25 |
| The dart of Death in the Hand of Time— | |
| That hand which mov’d on the dial! | |
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| As she went with her taper up the stair, | |
| How little her swollen eye was aware | |
| That the Shadow which follow’d was double! | 30 |
| Or when she clos’d her chamber door, | |
| It was shutting out, and for evermore, | |
| The world—and its worldly trouble. | |
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| Little she dreamt, as she laid aside | |
| Her jewels, after one glance of pride, | 35 |
| They were solemn bequests to Vanity; | |
| Or when her robes she began to doff | |
| That she stood so near to the putting off | |
| Of the flesh that clothes humanity. | |
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| And when she quench’d the taper’s light, | 40 |
| How little she thought, as the smoke took flight, | |
| That her day was done—and merged in a night | |
| Of dreams and durations uncertain, | |
| Or along with her own, | |
| That a Hand of Bone | 45 |
| Was closing mortality’s curtain! | |
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| But life is sweet, and mortality blind, | |
| And youth is hopeful, and Fate is kind | |
| In concealing the day of sorrow; | |
| And enough is the present tense of toil, | 50 |
| For this world is to all a stiffish soil, | |
| And the mind flies back with a glad recoil | |
| From the debts not due till to-morrow. | |
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| Wherefore else does the spirit fly | |
| And bids its daily cares good-bye, | 55 |
| Along with its daily clothing? | |
| Just as the felon condemn’d to die, | |
| With a very natural loathing, | |
| Leaving the Sheriff to dream of ropes, | |
| From his gloomy cell in a vision elopes | 60 |
| To caper on sunny greens and slopes, | |
| Instead of the dance upon nothing. | |
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| Thus, even thus, the Countess slept, | |
| While Death still nearer and nearer crept, | |
| Like the Thane who smote the sleeping; | 65 |
| But her mind was busy with early joys, | |
| Her golden treasures and golden toys, | |
| That flash’d a bright | |
| And golden light | |
| Under lids still red with weeping. | 70 |
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| The golden doll that she used to hug! | |
| Her coral of gold, and the golden mug! | |
| Her godfather’s golden presents! | |
| The golden service she had at her meals, | |
| The golden watch, and chain, and seals, | 75 |
| The golden scissors, and thread, and reels, | |
| And her golden fishes and pheasants! | |
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| The golden guineas in silken purse, | |
| And the Golden Legends she heard from her nurse, | |
| Of the Mayor in his gilded carriage, | 80 |
| And London streets that were pav’d with gold, | |
| And the Golden Eggs that were laid of old, | |
| With each golden thing | |
| To the golden ring | |
| At her own auriferous Marriage! | 85 |
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| And still the golden light of the sun | |
| Through her golden dream appear’d to run, | |
| Though the night that roar’d without was one | |
| To terrify seamen or gypsies, | |
| While the moon, as if in malicious mirth, | 90 |
| Kept peeping down at the ruffled earth, | |
| As though she enjoy’d the tempest’s birth, | |
| In revenge of her old eclipses. | |
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| But vainly, vainly, the thunder fell, | |
| For the soul of the Sleeper was under a spell | 95 |
| That time had lately embitter’d: | |
| The Count, as once at her foot he knelt— | |
| That foot which now he wanted to melt! | |
| But—hush!—’t was a stir at her pillow she felt, | |
| And some object before her glitter’d. | 100 |
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| ’T was the Golden Leg!—she knew its gleam! | |
| And up she started, and tried to scream,— | |
| But, ev’n in the moment she started, | |
| Down came the limb with a frightful smash, | |
| And, lost in the universal flash | 105 |
| That her eyeballs made at so mortal a crash, | |
| The Spark, Call’d Vital, departed! | |
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| Gold, still gold! hard, yellow, and cold, | |
| For gold she had liv’d, and she died for gold, | |
| By a golden weapon—not oaken; | 110 |
| In the morning they found her all alone— | |
| Stiff, and bloody, and cold as stone— | |
| But her Leg, the Golden leg, was gone, | |
| And the “Golden Bowl was broken!” | |
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| Gold—still gold! it haunted her yet: | 115 |
| At the Golden Lion the Inquest met— | |
| Its foreman a carver and gilder, | |
| And the Jury debated from twelve till there | |
| What the Verdict ought to be, | |
| And they brought it in as Felo-de-Se, | 120 |
| “Because her own Leg had kill’d her!” | |
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