| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Poems.
XV. “If I Believed in Death, How Sweet a Bed” | | By Frances Anne Kemble (1809–1893) |
| | | IF I believed in death, how sweet a bed | |
| For such a blessèd slumber could I find, | |
| Beneath the blue and sparkling coverlid | |
| Of that smooth sea, stirred by no breath of wind. | |
| Oh if I could but die, and be at rest, | 5 |
| Thou smiling sea! in thy slow-heaving breast. | |
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| But all thy thousand waves quench not the spark | |
| Immortal, woful, of one human soul; | |
| Under thy sapphire vault, cold, still, and dark, | |
| Deep down, below where tides and tempests roll, | 10 |
| The spirit may not lose its deeper curse, | |
| It finds no death in the whole universe. | | | | |
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