III.

Ay, but soon ye woke up shrieking, As a child that wakes at night From a dream of sisters speaking In a garden's summer-light,-- That wakes, starting up and bounding, In a lonely lonely bed, With a wall of darkness round him, Stifling black about his head! And the full sense of your mortal Rushed upon you deep and loud, And ye heard the thunder hurtle From the silence of the cloud. Funeral-torches at your gateway Threw a dreadful light within. All things changed: you rose up straightway, And saluted Death and Sin. Since, your outward man has rallied, And your eye and voice grown bold; Yet the Sphinx of Life stands pallid, With her saddest secret told. Happy places have grown holy: If ye went where once ye went, Only tears would fall down slowly, As at solemn sacrament. Merry books, once read for pastime, If ye dared to read again, Only memories of the last time Would swim darkly up the brain. Household names, which used to flutter Through your laughter unawares,-- God's Divinest ye could utter With less trembling in your prayers. Ye have dropt adown your head, and it seems as if ye tread On your own hearts in the path Ye are called to in His wrath, And your prayers go up in wail --"Dost Thou see, then, all our loss, O Thou agonized on cross? Art thou reading all its tale?" So mournfully ye think upon the Dead!