Or a head do I clutch, whose devices were such, That death must have lent them his sting-- So daring they were, so reckless of fear, As heaven had wanted a king? Did the tongue of the lie, while it couch'd like a spy In the haunt of thy venomous jaws, Its slander display, as poisons its prey The devilish snake in the grass? That member unchain'd, by strong bands is restrain'd, The inflexible shackles of death; And, its emblem, the trail of the worm, shall prevail Where its slaver once harbour'd beneath. And oh! if thy scorn went down to thine urn And expired, with impenitent groan; To repose where thou art is of peace all thy part, And then to appear--at the Throne! Like a frog, from the lake that leapeth, to take To the Judge of thy actions the way, And to hear from His lips, amid nature's eclipse, Thy sentence of termless dismay. * * * * * The hardness of iron thy bones shall environ, To brass-links the veins of thy frame Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow Like the anvil that melts not in flame! But wert thou the mould of a champion bold For God and his truth and his law? Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and each sense Is broken--each gem with a flaw-- Be comforted thou! For rising in air Thy flight shall the clarion obey; And the shell of thy dust thou shalt leave to be crush'd, If they will, by the creatures of prey. [106] Maiden or virgin--_orig._ AM BRUADAR. THE DREAM. We submit these further illustrations of the moral maxims of "The Skull." In the original they are touched in phraseology scarcely unworthy of the poet's Saxon models. As lockfasted in slumber's arms I lay and dream'd (so dreams our race When every spectral object charms, To melt, like shadow, in the chase), A vision came; mine ear confess'd Its solemn sounds. "Thou man distraught! Say, owns the wind thy hand's arrest, Or fills the world thy crave of thought? * * * * * "Since fell transgression ravaged here And reft Man's garden-joys away, He weeps his unavailing tear, And straggles, like a lamb astray. "With shrilling bleat for comfort hie To every pinfold, humankind; Ah, there the fostering teat is dry, The stranger mother proves unkind. "No rest for toil, no drink for drought, For bosom-peace the shadow's wing-- So feeds expectancy on nought, And suckles every lying thing. "Some woe for ever wreathes its chain, And hope foretells the clasp undone; Relief at handbreadth seems, in vain Thy fetter'd arms embrace--'tis gone!