On the Death of Meshchersky

Ah! that funereal toll! loud tongue of time!
What woes are centred in that frightful sound!
It calls! it calls me with a voice sublime,
To the lone chambers of the burial ground.
My life’s first footsteps are midst yawning graves;
A pale, teeth-clattering spectre passes nigh;
A scythe of lightning that pale spectre waves,
Mows down man’s days like grass, and hurries by.

Nought his untired rapacity can cloy:
Monarchs and slaves are all the earth-worm’s food;
And the wild-raging elements destroy
Even the recording tomb. Vicissitude
Devours the pride of glory; as the sea
Insatiate drinks the waters, so our days
And years are lost in deep eternity;
Cities and empires vandal death decays.

We tremble on the borders of the abyss,
And giddy totter headlong from on high;
For death with life our common portion is,
And man is only born that he may die.
Death knows no sympathy; he tramples on
All tenderness--extinguishes the stars--
Tears from the firmament the glowing sun,
And blots out worlds in his gigantic wars.

But mortal man forgets mortality!
His dreams crowd ages into life’s short day;--
While, like a midnight robber stealing by,
Death plunders time by hour and hour away.
When least we fear, then is the traitor nigh;
Where most secure we seem, he loves to come:
Less swift than he, the bolts of thunder fly,
Less sure than he, the lightning strikes the dome.

Thou son of luxury! child of dance and song,
O whither, whither is thy spirit fled?
On life’s dull sea thy bark delayed not long,
But sought the silent haven of the dead.
Here is thy dust! Thy spirit is not here!
Where is it? There. Where there? ’tis all unknown:
We weep and sigh--alas! we know not where!
For man is doubt and darkness’ eldest son.

Where love and joy and health and worldly good,
And all life’s pleasures in their splendor glow;
He dries the nerves up, he congeals the blood,
And shakes the very soul with mighty woe.
The songs of joy are funeral cries become--
And luxury’s board is cover’d with a pall--
The chamber of the banquet is a tomb:
Death, the pale autocrat, he rules o’er all.

He rules o’er all--and him must kings obey,
Whose will no counsel knows and no control;
The proud and gilded great ones are his prey,
Who stand like pillars in a tyrant’s hall.
Beauty and beauty’s charms are nought to him,
Man’s intellect is crush’d by his decrees;
Man’s brightest light his dreadful frown can dim--
He whets his scythe with trophies such as these.

Death makes all nature tremble! What are we?
To-morrow dust, though almost gods to-day!
A mixture strange of pride and poverty:
Now basking in hope’s fair and gladdening ray;
To-morrow--what is man to-morrow? Nought!
How swiftly rolls the never-tarrying stream,
Hour after hour to gloomy chaos brought;
While ages dawn and vanish like a dream!

Even like an infant’s sweet imagining,
My early, lovely spring-tide hurried on:
Beauty just smiled and sported--then took wing;
Joy laugh’d a moment and then joy was gone.
Now less susceptible of bliss, less blest,
Wiser and worldlier, panting for a name;
With a vain thirst of honour, pain’d, opprest,
I labour wearied up the hill of fame.

But manhood too and manhood’s care will pass,
And glory’s struggles be ere long forgot;
For fame, like wealth, has busy wings, alas!
And joy’s and sorrow’s sound will move us not.
Begone, ye vain pursuits, ye dreams of bliss,
Changing and false, no longer flatter me!
I stand upon the sepulchre’s abyss,
In the dark portal of eternity.

To-day, my friend! may bring our final doom;
If not to-day, to-morrow surely will:
Why look we sadly on Meshchersky’s tomb?
Here he was happy--he is happy still!
Life was not given for ages to endure,
But virtue on death’s bosom finds her rest;
And know--a spirit order’d well and pure,
May make life’s sorrows and life’s changes blest.