Page:Poetical sketches reprint (1868).djvu/91

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE THIRD
73
Cover'd with silence and forgetfulness;
Death roams in cities' smoke, and in still night,
When men sleep in their beds, walketh about!
How many in walled cities lie and groan,
Turning themselves upon their beds,
Talking with death, answering his hard demands!
How many walk in darkness, terrors are round
The curtains of their beds, destruction is
Ready at the door! How many sleep
In earth, cover'd with stones and deathy dust,
Resting in quietness, whose spirits walk
Upon the clouds of heaven, to die no more.
Yet death is terrible, tho' borne on angels' wings.
How terrible then is the field of death,
Where he doth rend the vault of heaven,
And shake the gates of hell!
O Dagworth, France is sick; the very sky,
Tho' sunshine light it, seems to me as pale
As the pale fainting man on his death-bed,
Whose face is shewn by light of sickly taper.
It makes me sad and sick at very heart;
Thousands must fall to-day.

Dagworth.
Thousands of souls must leave this prison-house,
To be exalted to those heavenly fields,