Perhaps 'twould suit your high behest
If some one, for a common jest,
Would take you, stove and all, away
And set you up there on the sleigh,
With all the family round you too:
Man, woman, child--the whole blest crew!
Old image, what! so shameless yet,
And prone on gauds your mind to set?
Think on your latter end at last!
Your hundredth year's already past.

* * * * *

THINK OF IT, MY SOUL![30] (1852)

Somewhere a pine is green,
Just where who knoweth,
And in a garth unseen
A rose-tree bloweth.
These are ordained for thee--
Think, oh soul, fixedly--
Over thy grave to be;
Swift the time floweth.

Two black steeds on the down
Briskly are faring,
Or on their way to town
Canter uncaring.
These may with heavy tread
Slowly convey the dead
E'en ere the shoes be shed
They now are wearing.

* * * * *

ERINNA TO SAPPHO[31] (1863)

(Erinna was a Greek poetess, a friend and pupil of Sappho of Lesbos.
She died at the age of nineteen.)

"Many the paths to Hades," an ancient proverb
Tells us, "and one of them thou thyself shalt follow,
Doubt not!" My sweetest Sappho, who can doubt it?
Tells not each day the old tale?
Yet the foreboding word in a youthful bosom
Rankles not, as a fisher bred by the seashore,
Deafened by use, perceives the breaker's thunder no more.
--Strangely, however, today my heart misgave me. Attend:
Sunny the glow of morn-tide, pouring
Through the trees of my well-walled garden,
Roused the slugabed (so of late thou calledst Erinna)
Early up from her sultry couch.
Full was my soul of quiet, although my blood beat
Quick with uncertain waves o'er the thin cheek's pallor.
Then, as I loosed the plaits of my shining tresses,
Parting with nard-moist comb above my forehead
The veil of hair--in the glass my own glance met me.
Eyes, strange eyes, I said, what will ye?
Spirit of me, that within there dwelled securely as yet,
Occultly wed to my living senses--
Demon-like, half smiling thy solemn message,
Thou dost nod to me, Death presaging!
--Ha! all at once like lightning a thrill went through me,
Or as a deadly arrow with sable feathers
Whizzing had grazed my temples,
So that, with hands pressed over my face, a long time
Dumb-struck I sat, while my thought reeled at the frightful abyss.

Tearless at first I pondered,