Page:Stanzas on an Ancient Superstition (1864).djvu/12

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To save one cheering beam to light their way,
 * Westward they stretch their suppliant bands in vain;

And listless watch the death-bed of the day,
 * Till the dusk twilight fills the distant plain,
 * Then upward moves the melancholy train,

With frantic grief or stern and pallid face.
 * And many shudder and look back again

Thro’ streaming tears; and with unsteady pace Follow reluctant on, nor dare their steps retrace.

Perchance their farewell glance sad memory leads
 * To tombs near home where they had hoped to lie;

While every throb of nature in them pleads
 * To shun the doom that calls them forth to die
 * Where no surviving hand will close the eye,

Or to its sheltering grave the body bear,
 * Oh! who would perish where no power is nigh

To shield the form we leave all helpless here? E’en welcome then would be the bitterest foe we fear!

On all it loves the spirit may look down;
 * Part of ourselves the body is, to rise

Immortal, and again to be our own.
 * If what we cherish here, in death we prize,
 * The soul, abandoning the happy skies,

On mournful wing disconsolate may come,
 * Lingering where its cold corpse unburied lies;

Aa theirs must lie, to wither in the gloom, Till the slow-crumbling hills their mouldering bones entomb.