“Roderick! it is a fearful strife,
For man endowed with mortal life,
Whose shroud of sentient clay can still
Feel feverish pang and fainting chill,
Whose eye can stare in stony trance,
Whose hair can rouse like warrior’s lance,—
’Tis hard for such to view, unfurl’d,
The curtain of the future world.
Yet, witness every quaking limb,
My sunken pulse, my eyeballs dim,