A RIDE WITH DEATH.
I saw him pass by, while the east-wind blew,
And the vernal blooms from the branches flew;
Lo! there he speeds, that old skeleton-man,
With his frame all bleached, all withered and wan;
His eye-balls are gone, and his cheek-bones bare,
And he rides a pale horse through the cold humid air!
Now he resteth himself ’neath an old dry tree,
Where the moss hath grown for a century:
He feeds his steed with grass that grew rank
On the field where warriors in battle sank;
Bedabbled with blood, it thick grew, and strong,
And to Death’s pale horse doth of right belong!
Gone is the beauty from violet blue,
For the look of Death hath pierced it through;
And the crocus that bloomed near the old dry tree,
Hath faded away, such a sight to see;
And the grass where he sat, that was bright and green,
Turned pale as the blades where a stone hath been.
Ha! ha! old pilgrim! may I go with thee,
Thy doings fearful and strange to see?
He nodded his head; not a word said Death,
For he had little need to waste his breath:
A man of short speech, he speaks in his brow;
He looks what he means, when he says “Come thou!”
We paused near a maiden with rosy cheek,
A lovely maiden, with blue eye meek;
But her youthful bloom, how it faded away!
Her heart was in heaven, she might not stay:
And we looked at an infant that lay on the breast,
A mother’s pride, and it sank to rest!
We stood by the cot of a widowed dame;
Life’s feeble embers gave out their last flame:
At the hut of a slave we stepped gently in;
With pity Death looked on his frame so thin,
And his face, as he watched at the old man’s bed,
Said “Peacefully let him be one with the dead!”
At a palace we tarried, and there one lay
On his last sad couch, at the close of day;
He struggled hard, but Death’s face said “No!
Duty is mine, wheresoever I go:
Peasant or king, it is all the same,
Mine must thou be—I have here thy name!”
We hovered around where a Christian sire
Lay waiting to join the eternal choir;
Peaceful and calm was his holy repose;
He sank as the sun on a May-day’s close:
He rose as the sun with beams tricked anew,
When flowers bend with beauty, and leaves with dew.
We crossed the path of a beautiful bark,
How many the corses, all stiff and stark!
Down sank the vessel beneath the wild wave,
No hand was near one poor soul to save!
We glanced at a ship by an iceberg crushed,
We gazed but a moment—then all was hushed.
We asked of a miser to yield up his gold,
But he loosed not his clutch when his hands were cold.
We entered a town, as it shook to and fro,
An earthquake was raging in fury below;
Dwellings were rocking like trees when storm-tost,
Crashing and sinking—till all were lost!
We stayed our flight o’er a funeral pile,
Where the Ganges roll’d swift through a deep defile;
Where Brahmin priests rent with cries the air,
While the victim lay burning and crackling there;
And the devotees of dark Jaggernath
We saw mangled and torn in its bloody path.
We paused a while where a family stood,
Partaking the sacred “body and blood;”
And we saw their mother unfaltering pray,
When life’s mellow evening way failing away;
And as she sighed out her last tremulous breath,
Was ended my first wild ride with Death.
—From the Knickerbocker.