eath the horrible countless eyes that you could not withstand?
Or was it God looked from his throne in a moment's disdain,
And you shrieked for a trial once more in the height of your pain?

Perhaps--but who knows--when you struggled so hard for life's breath,
You saw nothing passing the grave except silence and death,
You lay shut in by the four clay walls of your cell,
There the live soul locked up in the stiff dead body's shell.

Dead, dead and coffin'd, buried beneath the clay,
And still the living soul caged in to wait decay,
For ever alone in night of unlifting gloom
There to think, and think, and think, in the silent tomb.

Or was it in death's cold land there was no perfume
Of the scented flowers, or lilt of a bird's gay tune.
No sea there, or no cool of a wind's fresh breath,
No woods, no plains, no dreams, and alas! no death?

Was there no life there that man's brain could understand?
No past, no future, hopes to come, in that strange land?
No human love, no sleep, no day, no night,
But ever eternal living in eternal light?

Perhaps the soul thus springing to fill its grave,
Found all the peace and happiness that it could crave;
All it had lost alone was that poor body's part
Which naught but grey corruption saw for its chart.

Ah well! for us there ended all one man's life with this--
A shot, a cry, a struggle, and a fainting woman's kiss;
Life's blood let 'mid the grasses--and all a world was lost,
And no one may ever know how he paid the cost.

He is lost in the crowd of the dead, in the night-time of death,
A name on a stone left to tell that he ever drew breath.
So desperate body die there, with your soul's long release,
And unhappy spirit God grant you Eternity's peace!

* * * * *

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
London & Edinburgh

Footnotes:

{21} "May my darling come through safely!"

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FAIRY CHANGELING AND OTHER
POEMS***

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