THE GRAVE

WHILST some affect the sun, and some the

shade,

Some flee the city, some the hermitage; Their aims as various as the roads they take In journeying through life; the task be mine To paint the gloomy horrors of the tomb; Th' appointed place of rendezvous, where all These trav❜llers meet. Thy succours I implore, - Eternal King! whose potent arm sustains The keys of hell and death. The Grave, dread thing!

Men shiver when thou'rt nam'd: nature appall'd Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah! how dark Thy long-extended realms, and rueful wastes, Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night,

Dark as was chaos ere the infant sun

Was roll'd together, or had tried his beams

Athwart the gloom profound! The sickly taper, By glimm'ring through thy low-brow'd misty vaults,

Furr'd round with mouldy damps and ropy slime,

variety?

What

Lets fall a supernumerary horror,

And only serves to make thy night more irksome!
Well do I know thee by thy trusty yew,
Cheerless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell
'Midst sculls and coffins, epitaphs and worms;
Where light-heel'd ghosts and visionary shades,
Beneath the wan cold moon (as fame reports)
Embodied thick, perform their mystic rounds.
No other merriment, dull tree! is thine.

See yonder hallow'd fane! the pious work
Of names once fam'd, now dubious or forgot,
And buried 'midst the wreck of things which were:
There lie interr'd the more illustrious dead. v
The wind is up: hark-how it howls!

Methinks

Till now I never heard a sound so dreary.
Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul

And tatter'd coats of arms, send back the sound,

Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults,

The mansions of the dead! Rous'd from their

slumbers,

In grim array the grisly spectres rise,

Grin horrible, and obstinately sullen

Pass and repass, hush'd as the foot of night!

Again the screech owl shrieks-ungracious sound!
I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill.

Quite round the pile, a row of rev'rend elms, Coeval near with that, all ragged shew,

Long lash'd by the rude winds; some rift half down

Their branchless trunks, others so thin a-top

That scarce two crows could lodge in the same

tree.

Strange things, the neighbours say, have happen'd
here.

Wild shrieks have issu'd from the hollow tombs ;
Dead men have come again, and walk'd about ;
And the great bell has toll'd, unrung, untouch'd!
Such tales their cheer, at wake or gossiping,
When it draws near the witching-time of night.

Oft in the lone church-yard at night I've seen, By glimpse of moon-shine, chequ❜ring through the

trees,

The school-boy, with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up,
And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones
(With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown)
That tell in homely phrase who lie below.
Sudden he starts! and hears, or thinks he hears,
The sound of something purring at his heels.
Full fast he flies, and dares not look behind him,

3

Jis?

English?