'The spider's most attenuated thread,
Is cord— is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.'
ANOTHER! 'tis a sad word to the heart,
That one by one has lost its hold on life,
From all it loved or valued, forced to part
In detail. Feeling dies not by the knife
That cuts at once and kills — its tortured strife
Is with distilled affliction, drop by drop
Oozing its bitterness. Our world is fife
With grief and sorrow! all that we would prop,
Or would be propped with, falls — when shall the ruin stop!
The sea has one and Palestine has one,
And Scotland has the last. The snooded maid
Shall gaze in wonder on the stranger's stone,
And wipe the dust off with her tartan plaid—
And from the lonely tomb where thou art laid,
Turn to some other monument — nor know
Whose grave she passes, or whose name she read—
Whose loved and honored relics lie below;
Whose is immortal joy, and whose is mortal woe.
There is a world of bliss hereafter — else
Why are the bad above, the good beneath
The green grass of the grave? The Mower fells
Flowers and briers alike. But man shall breathe
(When he his desolating blade shall sheathe
And rest him from his work) in a pure sky,
Above the smoke of burning worlds; — and Death
On scorched pinions with the dead shall lie,
When time, with all his years and centuries has passed by.