Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/18

14 And now he sat him on a church's steps,

Fainting from utter helplessness and want.

A crowd swept by him. On, with stately step,

Came a procession, headed by a bier

Shrouded with sable drapery of grief.

They were the first that had not heeded him,

And wondering with a strange happiness

If he had not been dreaming all his woe,

He followed the procession to the vault,

Beneath the marble pavement of the church,

And saw them lift the coffin-lid once more

Ere its pale inmate perished from their sight;

When lo! the corpse sat upright, and its hand,

Wasted and fleshless, pointed straight at him;

And the eyes gazed with terror; and the lips

Breathed a low wail of fear, and, quivering, closed;

Then the corpse sank back motionless again.

Enough for him. Even the haggard face,

And hair more white than silver, could not make

His heart deceive him. 'Twas her altered form.

The crowd turned to him when that bony hand

Pointed him out, and when surprise was past,

Rushed with a yell upon him. Thus he woke.

The morning drum proclaimed the time was near

When deadly contest between foe and foe

Required his soldier's spirit, and he shook

The influence from him of that dreadful dream,

And went forth to the struggle.

Night came again, and closed the scene of strife;

But not a night of beauty. 'Twould have mocked

Too much the desolation of the blood-stained earth,

Had beaming skies looked on it. Flying clouds

Belted the moon with mourning; and the wind

Moaned hoarsely through the tree-tops, that bent low

To evade its rising fury. In this hour

A dying wretch uplifted his pale face,

Praying for that wherewith to quench his thirst,