DEATH-continued.

O death, all eloquent! you only prove
What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love.
How loved, how valued once, avails thee not;
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!

Pope, Elo.

Pope, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, 71.

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd. Ibid. 51.
But thousands die without or this or that,
Die, and endow a college or a cat.

The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

O grave! where is thy victory?
O death! where is thy sting?

The reconciling grave

Pope, M. E. 111. 95.

Pope, Dying Ch. to his Soul.

Swallows distinction first, that made us foes,

That all alike lie down in peace together. Southern, Fatal M.

Where the prime actors of the last year's scene?
Their port so proud, their buskin, and their plume?

How many sleep, who kept the world awake

With lustre and with noise! Young, Night Thoughts, 1x.

Ib. 1v. 15.

16. 11. 633.

Man makes a death, which nature never made.
The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is beyond the common walk
Of life, quite in the verge of heaven.
The deep, damp vault, the darkness, and the worm.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave,

virtuous

a winter's eve,

These are the bugbears of
The terrors of the living, not the dead.
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there ;

Far lovelier!

pity swells the tide of love.

That lives greatly,

Ib. IV. 10.

16. 111. 104.

16. v. 1011.

Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.
Whate er his fateat fame, who greatly dies,
High his fath hope, where heroes shall despair. Ib. N. T.

Death is the crown of life:

Were death deny'd, poor man would live in vain;
Were death deny'd, to live would not be life :
Were death deny'd, ee'n fools would wish to die.

Young, N. T. III. 526.

Death wounds to cure; we fall, we rise, we reign;
Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies,
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight.
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost.
This king of terrors is the prince of peace.
Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew,
She sparkled, was exhal'd, and went to heaven.

Ib. 530.

Ιδ.ν.600.

The death of those distinguish'd by their station,
But by their virtue more, awakes the mind
To solemn dread, and strikes a saddening awe:
Not that we grieve for them, but for ourselves,
Left to the toil of life. Thomson, Tan. and Sigismunda, 1. 1.

Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death? Gray, Elegy, x1.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour,

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Gray, Elegy.

How shocking must thy summons be, O death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions;
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnish'd for that world to come!

Blair, Grave.

All flesh is grass, and all its glory fades
Like the fair flow'r dishevell'd in the wind;
Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream;

The man we celebrate must find a tomb,

What is death

And we that worship him, ignoble graves. Cowper, Task, 111.261.

To him who meets it with an upright heart?
A quiet haven, where his shatter'd bark
Harbours secure, till the rough storm is past.
Perhaps a passage, overhung with clouds
But at its entrance; a few leagues beyond
Opening to kinder skies and milder suns,
And seas pacific as the soul that seeks them.

Hurdis.

DEATH-continued.

0, Death! the poor man's dearest friend,
The kindest and the best!
Welcome the hour, my aged limbs
Are laid with thee at rest!

Burns.

Byron, Pris. of Chi. VIII.

Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood.
Death, so call'd, is a thing that makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep. Byron, D. J. XIV. 3.
Death shuns the wretch who fain the blow would meet. Ib.

"Whom the gods love die young" was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more,
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,

Except mere breath.

Death is but what the haughty brave,

Byron, Don Juan, IV.

The weak must bear, the wretch must crave. Byron, Giaour. What shall he be ere night? Perchance a thing

O'er which the raven flaps his funeral wing. Byron, Corsair.

I live,

But live to die: and living, see nothing

To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,

A loathsome and yet all invincible

I

Despise myself, yet cannot overcome-
And so I live.

And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;

soft, and charms so rare,

to earth!

And form so
Too soon return'd
And the spot the crowd may tread
Though earth received thee in her bed,
In carelessness or mirth,

moment

not brook

on that grave to look.
How this very hour to die!
To soar from earth, and find all fears
Lost in thy light, eternity!
And wert lovely
Thy without a cloud hath pass'd,

thou

to the last;

As stars that shoot along the sky not decay'd! Shine brightest as they fall from

high.

Byron, Cain, 1. 1.

Byron.

Byron.

Byron.

128

DEATH.

DEATH-continued.

When musing on companions gone,

We doubly feel ourselves alone.

Sir W. Scott, Marmion.

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,

Morn of toil, nor night of waking. Scott, L. of Lake, 1. 31.

Since, howe'er protracted, death will come,

Why fondly study, with ingenious pains,

To put it off! To breathe a little longer

Is to defer our fate, but not to shun it.

Small gain! which wisdom with indiff'rent eye

Beholds.

Hannah More, David and Goliah, 4.

Leaves have their times to fall,

And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,

And stars to set-but all,

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O death! Mrs. Hemans.

I think poor beggars court St. Giles,

Rich beggars court St. Stephen;

And Death looks down with nods and smiles,

And makes the odds all even:

I think some die upon the field,

And some upon the billow,

And some are laid beneath a shield,

And some beneath a willow.

Praed, Brazen Head

Death! to the happy thou art terrible,
But how the wretched love to think of thee,

O thou true comforter, the friend of all

Who have no friend beside.

Southey, Joan of Arc.

Death we should prize as the best gift of nature,
As a safe inn, where weary travellers,

When they have journey'd through a world of cares,

May put off life, and be at rest for ever. Southerne, Loy. Bro.

We thought her dying while she slept,

And sleeping when she died.

T. Hood, Death-bed.

Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb
In life's happy morning hath hid from our eyes,
Ere sin threw a blight o'er the spirit's young bloom,
Or earth had profaned what was born for the skies.
Death chill'd the fair fountain ere sorrow had stain'd it,
'Twas frozen in all the pure light of its course,
And but sleeps till the sunshine of heaven unchains it,
To water that Eden where first was its source.

T. Moore.

129

DEATH-Continued.

DEATH.

O grief beyond all other griefs, when fate
First leaves the young heart lone and desolate
In the wide world, without that only tie,
For which it wished to live, or feared to die.

The dead are like the stars, by day
Withdrawn from mortal eye,

But not extinct, they hold their way
In glory through the sky:
Spirits, from bondage thus set free,
Vanish amidst immensity,
Where human thought, like human sight,
Fails to pursue their trackless
Friend after friend departs;
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
That finds not here an end;
Were this frail world our final rest,

flight.

Thos. Moore.

Jas. Montgomery.

Living or dying, none were blest. Jas. Montgomery, Friends.

I know thou hast gone to the home of thy rest;
Then why should my soul be so sad?
I know thou hast gone where the weary are blest,
And the mourner looks up, and is glad!
Where love has put off, in the land of its birth,
The stains it had gather'd in this,
And hope, the sweet singer that gladden'd the earth,

Lies asleep on the bosom of bliss.

T. K. Hervey.

It matters not at what hour of the day
The righteous fall asleep; death cannot come
To him untimely who is fit to die;
The less of this cold world, the more of heaven;
The briefer life, the earlier immortality.

There is no death! What seems so is transition.

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life Elysian,

Whose portal we call death.

There is

Milman.

Longfellow, Resignation.

And with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the Howers that grow between.
Weep not for him who dieth,
For he and is
And whereon he lieth
Is the green earth's quiet breast.

reaper, whose name is Death,

sleeps

at rest;

Longfellow, Poems.

Hon. Mrs. Norton.

K