And more than angels share, and raise, and crown, And eternize, the birth, bloom, bursts of bliss. What need I more? O Death, the palm is thine. Then welcome, Death! thy dreaded harbingers, Age and disease; disease, though long my guest; That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life; Which, pluck'd a little more, will toll the bell, 490 That calls my few friends to my funeral; 491 Where feeble nature drops, perhaps, a tear, While reason and religion, better taught, Congratulate the dead, and crown his tomb With wreath triumphant. Death is victory; It binds in chains the raging ills of life: Lust and ambition, wrath and avarice, Dragg'd at his chariot-wheel, applaud his power. That ills corrosive, cares importunate, Are not immortal too, O Death! is thine. 500 Our day of dissolution!--name it right; 'Tis our great pay-day; 'tis our harvest, rich And ripe: what though the sickle, sometimes keen, Just scars us as we reap the golden grain? More than thy balm, O Gilead! heals the wound. Birth's feeble cry, and death's deep dismal groan, Are slender tributes low-tax'd nature pays For mighty gain: the gain of each, a life! But O! the last the former so transcends, Life dies, compared; life lives beyond the grave. 510 And feel I, Death! no joy from thought of thee? Death, the great counsellor, who man inspires With every nobler thought, and fairer deed! Death, the deliverer, who rescues man! Death, the rewarder, who the rescued crowns! Death, that absolves my birth; a curse without it! Rich death, that realises all my cares, Toils, virtues, hopes; without it a chimera! Death, of all pain the period, not of joy; Joy's source, and subject, still subsist unhurt; 520 One, in my soul; and one, in her great Sire; Though the four winds were warring for my dust. Yes, and from winds, and waves, and central night, Though prison'd there, my dust too I reclaim (To dust when drop proud nature's proudest spheres), And live entire. Death is the crown of life: 526 Were death denied, poor man would live in vain; Were death denied, to live would not be life; Were death denied, even fools would wish to die. Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign! Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies; Where blooming Eden withers in our sight: Death gives us more than was in Eden lost. This king of terrors is the prince of peace. When shall I die to vanity, pain, death? When shall I die?--When shall I live for ever? 536