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Show DEAD. Ah ! God how strange fche rattling in the street Comes to me where I lie and the hours pass. H I watch a beetle crawling up the sheet That covers me, and curiously note The green and yellow back like mouldy brass, H And can not oven shudder at the thought H How soon the loathsome thing will roach my H And by such things alone I measured out The slow drip of the minutes from Time's oaves. For if I think of when I lived, I doubt I It was but yestordny I brushed the flowers; I But when I think of what I am, thought leaves I The weak mind dizzy in a waste of hours. I 0 God, how happy is the man that grioves! Life? It was life to look upon her face, And it was life to rage when she was gone; S But this new horror! In the market-place A form, In all things like me as I moved H Of old, is marked or hailed of many an one H That takes it for his friend that lived and loved, H And I laugh voicelessly, a laugh of stone. H For here I He and neither move nor feel, H And watch that Other pacing up and down H The room, or pausing at hif potter's wheel H To turn out cunning vefcstb from the clay, Vessels that he will hawk about the town, And then return to work another day Jm Frowning; but I, I neither smile nor frown. I see him take his coat down from the peg And put it on, and open the white door, And brush some bit of cobweb from his leg, And look about the room before he goes; And then the clock goes ticking as before, And I am with him and know all he does, And I am here and tell each clock-tick o'er. And men are praising him for subtle skill; And women love him God alone knows why! He can have all the world holds at his will But this, to be a living soul, and this No man but I can give him; and I lie And make no sign, and care not what he is, And hardly know if this indeed be I. Ah, if she came and bent above me here, Who lie with straight bands bound about my chin! Ah, if she came and stood beside this bier With aureoles as of old upon her hair To light the darkness of his burial bin! Should I not rise again and breathe the air Ajnd feel the veins warm that the. blood beats in? |
