D E A T H.
Poets have given to Death a heart of iron, bowels of steel, black wings, and a net with which she envelopes her victims. Statuaries carve her under the form of a large skeleton, armed with a scythe, and bearing wings. Sparta and Elis honoured her, but Phœnicia and Spain paid to her more particularly the homage of a divinity. She inhabits the infernal regions; and though, in more modern times, Death has been always addressed as a divinity of the masculine gender. The Lacedæmonians indeed, regarded her, not as an existing, but as an imaginary being.
"Mysterious power! whose dark and gloomy sway
Extends o'er all creation, what art thou?
They call thee 'King of Terrors!' drear dismay
Followeth thy footsteps, and around thy brow
Hovers a thick impenetrable cloud,
Which, to some hearts, is Hope's sad funeral shroud.
Beside the infant on its cradle bed,
The mother watches thro' the hour of night;
Hope hath not quite her lonely spirit fled,
Tho' o'er her first-born babe hath passed the blight
Of fell disease: wait, wait one moment more,
Thy hand has touched it, Death, and hope is o'er.
Thou turn'st the hall of revelry to gloom,
The wedding garment to a garb of woe;
Thou com'st in silence to the banquet room,
Ceased is the noisy mirth, the red wine's flow,
And men look pale at thee, and gasp for breath,
Thou doest this, thou doest more, oh! Death
Thou twin'st the cypress wreath round victory's brow,
The brave have won the fight, but, fighting, fell;
It was thine arm that laid the victor low,
And toll'd amid the triumph, a lone knell
For his departure: Death—thy gloomy power
Can throw a sadness o'er the happiest hour.
Thou comest to the monarch in his hour
Of pomp, and pride, and royalty's array;
And the next victim of thy reckless power
May be the beggar in his hut of clay:
Thy hand can lay the tattered vagrant down
Beside the head that wore the kingly crown.
Childhood is thine, its unexpanded bloom,
Shrinks to decay beneath thy chilling breath;
Gay Youth, thou witherest, with thy touch of doom,
Stern Manhood shrinks beneath thy grasp, oh, death,
And fragile Age by worldly cares opprest,
Sinks, softly sinks, into those arms for rest.
And then methought death's hollow voice replied,
'Rash mortal—would'st thou tempt the dangerous gloom,
Launch thy frail bark upon the awful tide
That leaves the lonely islands of the tomb;
Darest thou, in thy vain impotence of pride
Demand the knowledge to frail man denied?
Call'st thou me reckless, when I place my hand
Upon the earliest buddings of the spring?
Had I allowed those sweet buds to expand,
What would the skies of gloomy autumn bring?
Darkness, dismay: those sweet buds, leaf by leaf,
Had sadly faded, full of tears and grief.
What though I slew the victor in his pride,
'Tis meet the brave on battle field should die,
His name is echoed thro' the nations wide,
Reared is the column where his ashes lie;
He sought for fame, he won it, bravely won;
He died for fame, when his great task was done.
What tho' I turn the banquet room to grief,
The wedding garment to a garb of woe,
Do I not bring to wounded hearts relief?
Do I not ease the wretched of his woe?
Then taunt me not with wanton cruelty,
Man knows 'tis written 'thou must surely die!'
But at what hour, no mortal power may know,
Whether at morn, at dewy eve, or night,
When sinks the heart beneath its weight of woe,
Or throb the pulses with supreme delight,
Vain mortal! cease God's sovereign will to scan,
Be thou prepared to meet the son of man!'"
Clarke.