62

With wreath triumphant: death is victory:
It binds in chains the raging ills of life:
Lust and ambition, wrath and avarice,
Dragg'd at his chariot-wheel, applaud his power.
That ills corrosive, cares importunate
Are not immortal too, O death! is thine.
Our day of dissolution!—name it right
'Tis our great pay-day, 'tis our harvest rich
And ripe: what though the sickle, sometimes keen,
Just scars us as we reap the golden grain;
More than thy balm, O Gilead! healing the wound.
Birth's feeble cry, and death's deep dismal groan
Are slender tributes low-tax'd nature pays
For mighty gain: the gain of each, a life!
But O! the last the former so transcends,
Life dies compared! life lives beyond the grave.
And feel I, death! no joy from thought of thee?
Death, the great counsellor, who man inspires
With nobler thought, and fairer deed!
Death, the deliverer, who rescues man!
Death, the rewarder, who the rescued crowns!
Death, that absolves my birth, a curse without it!
Rich death, that realizes all my cares,
Toils, virtues, hopes:—without it a chimera!
Death, of all pain the period, not of joy;
Joy's source and subject still subsist unhurt,
One in my soul, and one in her great sire;
Though the four winds were warring for my dust:
Yes, and from winds, and waves, and central night,
Though prison'd there, my dust too I reclaim,

63

To dust when drop proud nature's proudest spheres,
And live entire: death is the crown of life;
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain;
Were death denied, to live would not be life;
Were death denied, even fools would wish to die:
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.
When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?
When shall I die?—when shall I live for ever?

B1978.43.1367 ba-obj-2290-0001

Yale Center for British Art, 2010