Classic Poem

I dreamt one night—it was a horrid dream—
That I was dead, and made was the division
Between the innocent flesh and guilty spirit,
And that the former, with a white sheet wrapt round
And nailed up in a box, was to the bottom
Sunk of a deep and narrow pit, which straight
Was filled to overheaping with a mixture
Of damp clay, rotting flesh and mouldering bones,
And lidded with a weighty stone whereon
Was writ my name and on what days precise
I first and last drew breath; while up the latter
Flew, without help of wings or fins or members,
By its mere lightness, through the air, to heaven;
And there being placed before the judgment-seat
Of its Maker, and most unsatisfactory
Answer returning to the question:—‘Wherefore
Wast thou as I made thee?’ was sent down
Tumbling by its own weight, down down to Hell,
To sink or swim or wade as best it might,
In sulphurous fires unquenchable for ever,
With Socrates and Plato, Aristides
Falsely surnamed the just, and Zoroaster,
Titus the good, and Cato and divine
Homer and Virgil, and so many millions
And millions more of wrongfully called good
And wise and virtuous, that for want of sulphur
And fire and snakes and instruments of torture
And room in Hell, the Universal Maker
Was by his own inherent justice forced,
That guilt might not go scot-free and unpunished,
To set apart so large a share of Heaven
For penal colonies and jails and treadmills,
That mutinies for want of flying-space
Began t' arise among the cherubim
And blessed spirits, and a Proclamation
Of Martial Law in Heaven was just being read
When, in a sweat of agony and fear,
I woke, and found myself in Germany,
In the close prison of a German bed,
And at my bedside Mr Oberkellner
With printed list of questions in his hand:
My name and age and birthplace and religion,
Trade or profession, wherefore I had come,
How long to stay, whither next bound; and so forth;
All at my peril to be truly answered,
And upon each a sixpence to the State,
Which duly paid I should obtain permission
To stay where I was so long as the State pleased,
Without being prosecuted as a felon,
Spy, or disturber of the public peace.