Convey them quickly, who are bound for death.”
Ye children, does death ever alarm you? asks the venerable pastor in Tegner’s Children of the Lord’s Supper: “Death is the brother of Love, twin-brother is he, and is only more austere to behold.” Shakspeare’s nobleman is gazing with disgust on a sottish sleeper, when he exclaims, “Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!” That image, as embodied in the form of a little child, has often inspired poets to strains of tender admiration. Malaspina, in one of Landor’s unacted (not to say, with almost equal truth, unread) plays thus contemplates, and apostrophizes, such an image:—
“And still thou sleepest, my sweet babe! Is death
Like sleep? Ah, who then, who would fear to die?
How beautiful is all serenity!
Sleep, a child’s sleep, oh how far more serene,
And oh, how far more beautiful than any!
Whether we breathe so gently, or breathe not,
Slight is the difference.”
More familiar to every one in the least conversant with current literature—not ephemeral in its currency, or running so fast as to be, like that which decayeth and waxeth old, ready to vanish away—is Mrs. Browning’s poem on a sleeping child—tired out with playing, and slumbering on the floor; the latter portion alone of which may here find room:—