Around that couch gathers a princely train,
And swells the holy anthem's funeral strain;
Sweeps the rich incense round it, like a cloud,
While the arch prelate's hand uplifts the shroud,—
Flings, from the silver cup, the sacred wave,
Which sains and smooths the passage to the grave.
Aye, one sleeps there,—if sleep it can be named,
By which one half of waking life is shamed.
Is that death, where the spirit stays behind,
With much as ever influence on its kind!
How can he die,—he who has left his soul
On the rich canvass, or the breathing scroll!
What is our life—our being—but the spirit,
All of our native heaven we inherit!
How can we die,—yet leave behind us all
The intellect that lit our earthly thrall!
That seems like death, which leaves behind it nought;
No void in nature,—no remembering thought;
Or, but the tenderness affection keeps,
Frail as itself—forgetting while it weeps!
That seems like death, the many thousands die,
Their sole memorials, a tear—a sigh!
But thus it is not to the mighty name,
Whose death was as the seal affixed to fame;—
And he who sleeps there, dust returned to dust,
Paler and colder than the marble bust
Beside—now strangely like the face of death,
As rigid as itself, unwarmed by breath,—
