The natural death we each night undergo
Should teach us that our passing's but a sleep,
Which we beyond the body's shadow may,
Even as a garment of the day we doff,
Put off for ever, being then no more
Nor less, indeed, than we have been before.

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

I never reared a young Wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye,
But when he most was sweet & fat
And tail-less; he was sure to die!

My head is heavy, my limbs are weary,
And it is not life that makes me move.

Tidings there are, death is in the offing,
O ignorant!, after food and drink, thou are running,
Life shall perish, Death shall prevail,
The proof of Thy going is Thy coming.

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as though I am flying into myself.

Baudelaire considers you his brother, and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words.

Dear pity, how, ah! how, wouldst thou become her!
That best becometh beauty's best attiring;
Shall my desert deserve no favour from her?
But still to waste myself in deep adminring,
Like him who calls to echo to relieve him,
Still tells and hears the tale, Oh! tale that grieves him.

Dead in the cold, a song-singing thrush,
Dead at the foot of a snowberry bush, -
Weave him a coffin of rush,
Dig him a grave where the soft mosses grow,
Raise him a tombstone of snow.

Running for Senator with clumsy pace,
He stooped so low, to win at least a place,
That Fortune, tempted by a mark so droll,
Sprang in an kicked him to the winning pole.