And the billows of cloud that around thee roll

Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,

This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of
steel;

When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there, Where all but this frame must surely be, Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear

No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?

Who painteth the shadows that are beneath The wide-winding caves of the peopled

tomb?

Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we

see?

Lechlade, Gloucestershire

HE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere

Each vapour that obscured the
sunset's ray;

And pallid evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of

day:

Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men,
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

They breathe their spells towards the departing day,

Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;

Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,

Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass

Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

Thou too, aërial Pile! whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant
spire,

Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound

Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,

Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,

And mingling with the still night and mute

sky

Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorless as this serenest night:

Here could I hope, like some inquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did

keep.