Through slumbering leaves, bring storms!—the tempest birth
Of memory, thought, remorse:—be holy, Earth!
I am the solemn night!"
Hemans.
D E A T H.
Poets have given to Death a heart of iron, bowels of steel, black wings, and a net with which she envelopes her victims. Statuaries carve her under the form of a large skeleton, armed with a scythe, and bearing wings. Sparta and Elis honoured her, but Phœnicia and Spain paid to her more particularly the homage of a divinity. She inhabits the infernal regions; and though, in more modern times, Death has been always addressed as a divinity of the masculine gender. The Lacedæmonians indeed, regarded her, not as an existing, but as an imaginary being.
"Mysterious power! whose dark and gloomy sway
Extends o'er all creation, what art thou?
They call thee 'King of Terrors!' drear dismay