There my couch shall be earth's freshest flowers, My curtains the night and the stars, And my spirit shall gather new powers, Uncramped by conventional bars. Love for love, truth for truth ever giving, My days shall be manfully sped; I shall know that I'm loved while I'm living, And be wept by fond eyes when I'm dead! The Death of Space. [Why has Satan's own Laureate never given to the world his marvellous threnody on the "Death of Space"? Who knows where the bays might have fallen, had he forwarded that mystic manuscript to the Home Office? If unwonted modesty withholds it from the public eye, the public will pardon the boldness that tears from blushing obscurity the following fragments of this unique poem.] Eternity shall raise her funeral-pile In the vast dungeon of the extinguished sky, And, clothed in dim barbaric splendour, smile, And murmur shouts of elegiac joy. While those that dwell beyond the realms of space, And those that people all that dreary void, When old Time's endless heir hath run his race, Shall live for aye, enjoying and enjoyed. And 'mid the agony of unsullied bliss, Her Demogorgon's doom shall Sin bewail, The undying serpent at the spheres shall hiss, And lash the empyrean with his tail. And Hell, inflated with supernal wrath, Shall open wide her thunder-bolted jaws, And shout into the dull cold ear of Death, That he must pay his debt to Nature's laws. And when the King of Terrors breathes his last, Infinity shall creep into her shell, Cause and effect shall from their thrones be cast, And end their strife with suicidal yell: While from their ashes, burnt with pomp of kings, 'Mid incense floating to the evanished skies, Nonenity, on circumambient wings, An everlasting Phoenix shall arise. Caroline. Lightsome, brightsome, cousin mine, Easy, breezy Caroline! With thy locks all raven-shaded, From thy merry brow up-braided, And thine eyes of laughter full, Brightsome cousin mine! Thou in chains of love hast bound me-- Wherefore dost thou flit around me, Laughter-loving Caroline? When I fain would go to sleep In my easy-chair, Wherefore on my slumbers creep-- Wherefore start me from repose, Tickling of my hooked nose, Pulling of my hair? Wherefore, then, if thou dost love me, So to words of anger move me, Corking of this face of mine, Tricksy cousin Caroline? When a sudden sound I hear, Much my nervous system suffers, Shaking through and through. Cousin Caroline, I fear, 'Twas no other, now, but you, Put gunpowder in the snuffers, Springing such a mine! Yes, it was your tricksy self, Wicked-tricked little elf, Naughty Caroline! Pins she sticks into my shoulder, Places needles in my chair, And, when I begin to scold her, Tosses back her combed hair, With so saucy-vexed an air, That the pitying beholder Cannot brook that I should scold her: Then again she comes, and bolder, Blacks anew this face of mine, Artful cousin Caroline!