Once more lay prostrate in the arms of death:
So thought we all: I, ere the fact I heard,
Could feel its cold shade creeping over me.
The shutters closed, the silence everywhere,
The very coffin of our lively home,
The sadden’d looks, the voices all suppress’d,
The kind physician’s face, that wore no smile,—
I did not need to ask the cause of all.
I sought and saw my Haydn. How his face
Gazed forth, a ghost’s, against my sense of guilt!