DREAM OF THE DEAD.
Sleep brought the dead to me. Their brows were kind,
And their tones tender, and, as erst they blent
Their sympathies with each familiar scene.
It was my earthliness that robed them still
In their material vestments, for they seemed
Not yet to have put their glorious garments on.
Methought, 'twere better thus to dwell with them,
Than with the living.
'Twas a chosen friend,
Beloved in school-days' happiness, who came,
And put her arm through mine, and meekly walked,
As she was wont, where'er I willed to lead,
To shady grove or river's sounding shore,
Or dizzy cliff, to gaze enthralled below
On wide-spread landscape and diminished throng.
One, too, was there, o'er whose departing steps
Night's cloud hung heavy ere she found the tomb;
One, to whose ear no infant lip, save mine,
E'er breathed the name of mother.
In her hour
Of conflict with the spoiler, that fond word
Fell with my tears upon her brow in vain—
She heard not, heeded not. But now she flew,
Upon the wing of dreams, to my embrace,
Full of fresh life, and in that beauty clad
Which charmed my earliest love. Speak, silent shade!
Speak to thy child! But with capricious haste
Sleep turned the tablet, and another came,
A stranger-matron, sicklied o'er and pale,
And mournful for my vanished guide I sought.
Then, many a group, in earnest converse flocked,
Upon whose lips I knew the burial-clay
Lay deep, for I had heard its hollow sound,
In hoarse reverberation, "dust to dust!"
They put a fair, young infant in my arms,
And that was of the dead. Yet still it seemed
Like other infants. First with fear it shrank,
And then in changeful gladness smiled, and spread
Its little hands in sportive laughter forth.
So I awoke, and then those gentle forms
Of faithful friendship and maternal love
Did flit away, and life, with all its cares,
Stood forth in strong reality.
Sweet dream!
And solemn, let me bear thee in my soul
Throughout the live-long day, to subjugate
My earth-born hope. I bow me at your names,
Sinless and passionless and pallid train!
The seal of truth is on your breasts, ye dead!
Ye may not swerve, nor from your vows recede,
Nor of your faith make shipwreck. Scarce a point
Divides you from us, though we fondly look
Through a long vista of imagined years,
And in the dimness of far distance, seek
To hide that tomb, whose crumbling verge we tread.