That sleep-bound shore with sad caressing waves,
The while the dead sleep sweeter in their graves.
’Tis oh! so still they sleep within each tomb,
Cool in long shadows of the cypress gloom,
Breathing in death the moon-flower’s rank perfume.
They know not when slow barges on the mere
Enter the portals of that place austere—
Enter and so forever disappear!
And in this island of a silent sea,
Whose marge e’er wistful waves lap listlessly,