Classic Poem

Rise from the loathsome and devouring tomb,
Give up thy body, woman without heart,
Now that its worldly part
Is over; and deaf, blind, and dumb,
Thou servest worms for food,
And from thine altitude
Fierce death has shaken thee down, and thou dost fit
Thy bed within a pit.
Night, endless night, hath got thee
To clutch, and to englut thee;
And rottenness confounds
Thy limbs and their sleek rounds;
And thou art stuck there, stuck there, in despite,
Like a foul animal in a trap at night.

Come in the public path, and see how all
Shall fly thee, as a child goes shrieking back
From something long and black,
Which mocks along the wall.
See if the kind will stay.
To hear what thou wouldst say;
See if thine arms can win
One soul to think of sin;
See if the tribe of wooers
Will now become pursuers;
And if where they make way,
Thou'lt carry now the day;
Or whether thou wilt spread not such foul night,
That thou thyself shalt feel the shudder and the fright.

Yes, till thou turn into the loathly hole,
As the least pain to thy bold-facedness,
There let thy foul distress
Turn round upon thy soul,
And cry, O wretch in a shroud,
That wast so headstrong proud,
This, this is the reward
For hearts that are so hard,
That flaunt so, and adorn,
And pamper them, and scorn
To cast a thought down hither,
Where all things come to wither;
And where no resting is, and no repentance,
Even to the day of the last awful sentence

Where is that alabaster bosom now,
That undulated once, like sea on shore?
'Tis clay unto the core.
Where are those sparkling eyes,
That were like twins o' the skies?
Alas! two caves are they,
Filled only with dismay.
Where is the lip, that shone
Like painting newly done?
Where the round cheek? and where
The sunny locks of hair?
And where the symmetry that bore them all?
Gone, like the broken clouds when the winds fall.

Did I not tell thee this, over and over?
The time will come, when thou wilt not be fair?
Nor have that conquering air?
Nor be supplied with lover?
Lo! now behold the fruit
Of all that scorn of shame;
Is there one spot the same
In all that fondled flesh?
One limb that 's not a mesh
Of worms, and sore offence,
And horrible succulence?
Tell me, is there one jot, one jot remaining,
To show thy lovers now the shapes which thou wast vain in?

Love?—Heaven should be implored for something else,
For power to weep, and to bow down one's soul.
Love?—'Tis a fiery dole,
A punishment like hell's.
Yet thou, puffed with thy power,
Who wert but as the flower
That warns us in the psalm,
Didst think thy veins ran balm
From an immortal fount;
Didst take on thee to mount
Upon an angel's wings,
When thou wert but as things
Clapped, on a day, in Ægypt's catalogue,
Under the worshipped nature of a dog,

Ill would it help thee now, were I to say,
Go, weep at thy confessor's feet, and cry,
‘Help, father, or I die:
See—see—he knows his prey,
Even he, the dragon old!
O, be thou a stronghold
Betwixt my foe and me!
For I would fain be free,
But am so bound in ill,
That struggle as I will,
It strains me to the last,
And I am losing fast
My breath and my poor soul, and thou art he
Alone canst save me in thy piety’

But thou didst smile perhaps, thou thing besotted,
Because, with some, death is a sleep, a word?
Hast thou then ever heard
Of one that slept and rotted?
Rare is the sleeping face
That wakes not as it was.
Thou shouldst have earned high heaven,
And then thou mightst have given
Glad looks below, and seen
Thy buried bones serene,
As odorous and as fair,
As evening lilies are;
And in the day of the great trump of doom,
Happy thy soul had been to join them at the tomb.

Ode, go thou down and enter
The horrors of the centre:
Then fly amain, with news of terrible fate
To those who think they may repent them late.