| |
| LET me at last be laid | |
| On that hillside I know which scans the vale, | |
| Beneath the thick yews’ shade, | |
| For shelter when the rains and winds prevail. | |
| It cannot be the eye | 5 |
| Is blinded when we die, | |
| So that we know no more at all | |
| The dawns increase, the evenings fall; | |
| Shut up within a mouldering chest of wood | |
| Asleep, and careless of our children’s good. | 10 |
| |
| Shall I not feel the spring, | |
| The yearly resurrection of the earth, | |
| Stir thro’ each sleeping thing | |
| With the fair throbbings and alarms of birth, | |
| Calling at its own hour | 15 |
| On folded leaf and flower, | |
| Calling the lamb, the lark, the bee, | |
| Calling the crocus and anemone, | |
| Calling new lustre to the maiden’s eye, | |
| And to the youth love and ambition high? | 20 |
| |
| Shall I no more admire | |
| The winding river kiss the daisied plain? | |
| Nor see the dawn’s cold fire | |
| Steal downward from the rosy hills again? | |
| Nor watch the frowning cloud, | 25 |
| Sublime with mutterings loud, | |
| Burst on the vale, nor eves of gold, | |
| Nor crescent moons, nor starlights cold, | |
| Nor the red casements glimmer on the hill | |
| At Yule-tides, when the frozen leas are still? | 30 |
| |
| Or should my children’s tread | |
| Through Sabbath twilights, when the hymns are done, | |
| Come softly overhead, | |
| Shall no sweet quickening through my bosom run, | |
| Till all my soul exale | 35 |
| Into the primrose pale, | |
| And every flower which springs above | |
| Breathes a new perfume from my love; | |
| And I shall throb, and stir, and thrill beneath | |
| With a pure passion stronger far than death? | 40 |
| |
| Sweet thought! fair, gracious dream, | |
| Too fair and fleeting for our clearer view! | |
| How should our reason deem | |
| That those dear souls, who sleep beneath the blue | |
| In rayless caverns dim, | 45 |
| ’Mid ocean monsters grim, | |
| Or whitening on the trackless sand, | |
| Or with strange corpses on each hand | |
| In battle-trench or city graveyard lie, | |
| Break not their prison-bonds till time shall die? | 50 |
| |
| Nay, ’t is not so indeed: | |
| With the last fluttering of the falling breath | |
| The clay-cold form doth breed | |
| A viewless essence, far too fine for death; | |
| And, ere one voice can mourn, | 55 |
| On upward pinions borne, | |
| They are hidden, they are hidden, in some thin air, | |
| Far from corruption, far from care, | |
| Where through a veil they view their former scene, | |
| Only a little touch’d by what has been. | 60 |
| |
| Touch’d but a little; and yet, | |
| Conscious of every change that doth befall, | |
| By constant change beset, | |
| The creatures of this tiny whirling ball, | |
| Fill’d with a higher being, | 65 |
| Dower’d with a clearer seeing, | |
| Risen to a vaster scheme of life, | |
| To wider joys and nobler strife, | |
| Viewing our little human hopes and fears | |
| As we our children’s fleeting smiles and tears. | 70 |
| |
| Then, whether with fire they burn | |
| This dwelling-house of mine when I am fled, | |
| And in a marble urn | |
| My ashes rest by my beloved dead, | |
| Or in the sweet cold earth | 75 |
| I pass from death to birth, | |
| And pay kind Nature’s life-long debt | |
| In heart’s-ease and in violet— | |
| In charnel-yard or hidden ocean wave, | |
| Where’er I lie, I shall not scorn my grave. | 80 |
| |
