Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

And, with a shudder in his skeleton frame,

He rose with supernatural strength, and sat

Upright, and communed with himself:

“I did not think to die

Till I had finished what I had to do;

I thought to pierce th’ eternal secret through

With this my mortal eye;

I felt,—Oh, God! it seemeth even now—

This cannot be the death-dew on my brow;

Grant me another year,