THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD.

———

BY HENRY S. HAGERT.

———

Sweet is the tomb—the all-forgetting tomb—

The dreamless couch round which no phantoms glide,

To harrow up the soul, or read a doom,

Of yore on their dread Sabbath prophesied.

Calm are its slumbers—never more shall pride,

Hatred or malice, wound the sleeping clay;

Wrong not the dead—they should be deified—

They lived and suffered, and have passed away;

Here be all feuds forgot—ye, too, shall have your day.

Your day of trouble, when the cup of Grief,

Full of its Marsh-waters must be drained

E’en to the dregs—when ye will need relief

From those upon whose head your lips have rained,

Curses; when they who were by you disdained,

Shall offer in their mockery, to dry

The hot dew of your brows by anguish strained

Through the parched skin. Ah! then, in grief to fly

For refuge to the grave, and find but calumny.

Let the dead rest—if ye must “snarl and bite,”

Turn to the living—there your venom spill;

Put on Deception’s mask, then vent your spite,

Sharpen your fangs, and gnaw, and rend, and kill—

’Tis a sweet banquet—eat and drink your fill;

Ye can thrive well on malice—but forbear

To stir the ashes of the dead, your skill

Can never fan a glowing ember there,

At which the hated torch of vengeance to repair.

Look on the dead, and if ye cower and quail

To think that ye shall be like them one day—

That the cold coffin-worm, with slimy trail,

Shall crawl across your forehead, or from play

Within your eyeless sockets forth shall stray,

To feast upon your rottenness, your hair

Shall drip the sick’ning grave-damps, and the gray,

Dry dust of the rank sepulchre, for air,

Fill up your nostrils—then by the cold grave forbear!

Think on your last dark hour, when a gaunt form,

Spectral and shadowy, shall stoop and set

A mystic seal upon you; when the storm

Of conscience rages, till its spray has wet

Your brow; when, like the doom in Venice met,

The walls of your lone chamber seem to close

Upon you, crushed and bleeding, dying, yet

Never to die—from torments such as those,

Would you be free? Withhold—break not the dead’s repose.