The Dead-Watch

Each saddened face is gone, and tearful eye
Of mother, brother, and of sisters fair;
With ghostly sound their distant footfalls die
Thro' whispering hall, and up the rustling stair.
In yonder room the newly dead doth sleep;
Begin we thus, my friend, our watch to keep.
And now both feed the fire and trim the lamp;
Pass cheerly, if we can, the slow-paced hours;
For, all without is cold, and drear, and damp,
And the wide air with storm and darkness lowers;
Pass cheerly, if we may, the live-long night,
And chase pale phantoms, paler fear, to flight.
We will not talk of death, of pall and knell —
Leave that, the mirth of brighter hours to check;
But tales of life, love, beauty, let us tell,
Or of stern battle, sea, and stormy wreck;
Call up the visions gay of other days —
Our boyhood's sports and merry youthful ways.
Hark to the distant bell! — an hour is gone!
Enter yon silent room with footsteps light;
Our brief, appointed duty must be done —
To bathe the face, and stay death's rapid blight:
To bare the rigid face, and dip the cloth
That hides a mortal, "crushed before the moth."
The bathing liquid scents the chilly room;
How spectral white are shroud and vailing lace
On yonder side-board, in the fearful gloom!
Take off the muffler from the sleeper's face —
You spoke, my friend, of sunken cheek and eye —
Ah, what a form of beauty here doth lie!
Never hath Art, from purest wax or stone,
So fair an image, and so lustrous, wrought;
It is as if a beam from heaven had shown
A weary angel in sweet slumber caught! —
The smiling lip, the warmly tinted cheek,
And all so calm, so saint-like, and so meek!
She softly sleeps, and yet how unlike sleep;
No fairy dreams flit o'er that marble face,
As ripples play along the breezy deep,
As shadows o'er the field each other chase;
The spirit dreams no more, but wakes in light,
And freely wings its flashing seraph flight.
She sweetly sleeps, her lips and eyelids sealed;
No ruby jewel heaves upon her breast,
With her quick breath now hidden, now revealed,
As setting stars long tremble in the west;
But white and still as drifts of moonlit snow,
Her folded cerements and her flushless brow.
Oh, there is beauty in the winter moon,
And beauty in the brilliant summer flower,
And in the liquid eye and luring tone
Of radiant Love's and rosy Laughter's hour;
But where is beauty, in this blooming world,
Like Death upon a maiden's lip impearled!
Vail we the dead, and close the open door;
Perhaps the spirit, ere it soar above,
Would watch its clay alone, and hover o'er
The face it once had kindled into love;
Commune we hence, oh friend, this wakeful night,
Of death made lovely by so blest a sight.