And mocked him in their martyrdoms of torments;
That secret, swift, and silent messenger,
Broke on them in their lonely hours;—in sleep,
In sickness; haunting them with dire suspicions
Of something in themselves that would not die—
Of an existence elsewhere, and hereafter;
Of which tradition was not wholly silent,
Yet spake not out; its dreary oracles
Confounded superstition to conceive,
And baffled scepticism to reject,