A DREAM OF RESURRECTION.
So heavenly beautiful it lay,
It was less like a human corse
Than that fair shape in which perforce
A dead hope clothes itself alway.
The dream shewed very plain: the bed
Where that known unknown face reposed—
A woman's face with eyelids closed,
A something precious that was dead:
A something, lost on this side life,
By which the mourner came and stood,
And laid down, ne'er to be renewed,
All glittering robes of earthly strife;—
Shred off, like votive locks of hair,
Youth's ornaments of joy and strength,
And cast them in their golden length
The silence of that bier to share.
No tears fell—but a gaze, fixed, long,
That memory might print the face
On the heart's ever-vacant space
With a sun-finger, sharp and strong.
Then kisses, dropping without sound;
And solemn arms wound round the dead;
And lifting from the natural bed
Into the coffin's strange new bound;
Yet still no parting—no belief
In death; no more than we believe
In some dread falsehood that would weave
The world in one black shroud of grief.