The Liberator

DEATH.

Ah! that funereal toll! loud tongue of time!
What woes are centred in that frightful sound!
It calls! it calls me with a voice sublime,
To the lone chambers of the burial ground.
My life's first footsteps are midst yawning graves;
A pale, teeth-chattering spectre passes nigh,
A scythe of lightning that pale spectre waves,
Mows down man's days like grass, and hurries by.
Nought his untired rapacity can cloy:
Monarchs and slaves are all the earth-worm's food:
And the wild raging elements destroy
Even the recording tomb. Vicissitude
Devours the pride of glory; as the sea
Insatiate drinks the waters, even so days
And years are lost in deep eternity,
Cities and empires vandal Death decays.
We tremble on the borders of the abyss,
And giddy, totter headlong from on high;
For death with life our common portion is.
And man is only born that he may die.
Death knows no sympathy; he tramples on
All tenderness—extinguishes the stars—
Tears from the firmament the glowing sun,
And blots out worlds in his gigantic wars.
But mortal man forgets mortality!
His dreams crowd ages into life's short day;—
While, like a midnight robber stealing by,
Death plunders time by hour and hour away.
When least we fear, then is the traitor nigh:
Where most secure we seem, he loves to come:
Lest swifter than he, the bolts of thunder fly,
Less sure than he, the lightning strikes the dome.

BOWRING.