Poor “sick stock-rider” and poet, with his wild eyes and wild words—Our proud, passionate heart “outwore its breast,” as “the sword outwears its sheath,” and so we “took our rest.” “Sleep!” says Mr. Swinburne, in the most beautiful and satisfactory of his poems, “Ave atque Vale,” the lament over another of the martyrs—the author of “Les Fleurs du Mal:”—
“Sleep; and, if life were bitter to thee, pardon,
if sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;
and to give thanks is good, and to forgive ...
Content thee, howsoe’er, whose days are done;
There lies not any troublous thing before,
nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,
for whom all winds are quiet as the sun,
all waters as the shore.”