When the voice of cheer or wail is gone;

To feel the lip o’er the dry tooth ope,

To catch half a ray through the eyelid’s scope,

Then shudder, though powerless all, to feel

The frost o’er the glazing orbs congeal,

When the breath grows low, and the heart is chill,

Though the blood creeps ghostlike around it still,

And to gasp a moment, and struggle, and try

To yield the starved spirit,—and groan,—and die,

And still to flicker a dying hour,