Classic Poem

What is this creature man, who struts the world
With so much majesty?—A frightful dream!
A midnight goblin, and a restless ghost;
Leaving the dismal regions of the tomb,
To walk in darkness, and astonish night,
With hideous yellings, and with piteous groans!

The radiant orbs that glitter o'er your heads,
What are they more than lamps in sepulchres?
That shine on dead men's bones, and point out death,
Misfortune, sorrow, misery and woe,
And all the sad innumerable ills
That blazon the 'scutcheon of mortality!
A horror visible! than which the shades,
The thickest midnight shades, Cimmerian glooms,
Were clearer sun-shine, and more wishful day!

The mountain's fragrance, and the meadow's growth,
The vernal blossom, and the summer's flow'r,
Are but funereal garlands, nature strows,
Munificent, on this stupendous hearse,
This decorated prelude to the grave;
Insatiable monster! yawning still,
Unfathomably deep!—A little while,
And lo! he closes on the painted scene,
And, surfeited with carnage, yawns no more!

Say, what is life?—this privilege to breathe?
But a continued sigh! a lengthen'd groan!
A felt mortality! a sense of pain!
A present evil, still foreboding worse!
A church-yard epitaph! a plaintive song!
A mournful universal elegy,
We ever read, and ever read with tears!