Classic Poem

Death on his steed of shadow
Went forth into the night,
For he had many a mission-deed
To do ere morning's light;
Many a soul to loosen
From Life's uneasy thrall,
And many a hopeful heart to lay
Beneath the shroud and pall.

Each star was blinking brightly,
As if no ill were near, —
As if all earthly things were calm
As its own silent sphere;
The drifted clouds were floating
High in the middle air,
And to the placid moonlight turned
Their shifting fringes fair.

Death on his awful mission
Kept his appointed way,
He bore with him the fiat-word
Which does not brook delay;
He stepped aside, and often,
To snatch some final sigh,
But left behind the breaking heart —
The sad surviving cry.

He reached the sickly city,
Dread with incessant din,
The maelstrom of the multitudes,
The crater-mouth of sin;
Strange tragedies were acting
Within that swarming town,
And Pestilence had beckoned him
To pull the curtain down.

He knocked at palace-portals,
He trod the marble floors,
And many a hasty summons breathed
At humbler dwelling doors;
He walked the weary workhouse,
He pierced the crowded jail,
And at his presence countless
Faces grew for ever pale.

He sought the crooked alleys,
The burrow-holes of men,
The haunt of vicious revelry,
The dim and sordid den;
He plunged into the cellar,
He clomb the garret stair,
And fearful were the ravages
His hand committed there.

To souls of doubt and darkness
A Demon's form he bore,
But unto eyes that looked beyond ,
An Angel's likeness wore;
He came to punish and appal,
He came to cheer and save, —
So different did the world receive
The Monarch of the Grave!

Death stole into a mansion
Of princely shape and size,
And filled with splendid mockeries,
To dazzle worldly eyes;
On a couch of gorgeous seeming
Lay stretched a man of sin,
Who shrieked with agony to feel
The Shadow coming in.

This man had scorned the lowly,
Had sneered at holiest things,
Had pierced the heart of Innocence
With sorrow's keenest stings;
In warfare with all goodness,
Had grown untimely old,
Till all his passions merged in one,
The burning greed of gold.

Ah! what availed his treasure,
In this his hour of woe?
It melted from his eager hand
Like early flakes of snow;
Death on his cloudy courser
Bore him the sad night through,
To answer for the evil things
Which he had dared to do.

Into a meaner dwelling
The dread Deliverer passed,
Where one had waited for him long,
And welcomed him at last —
One who beheld no sternness
In Death's triumphant mien,
So truthful and so beautiful
His earthly life had been!

Imbued with gentlest virtues,
Endowed with mental powers,
He left a fair and fruitful name
To grace this world of ours;
But in his work of wisdom
He overtasked his frame,
And smiled with hope and thankfulness
When his Deliverance came.

Death took them on his courser,
Two souls, how different they!
But neither saw, and neither heard
The other on the way;
And as through mist and darkness
Death urged his steed apace,
To one he showed a scowling front,
To one a shining face.

To one low words he uttered,
As stern as they were sad,
But to the other songs of joy,
Which made the spirit glad:
Thus through a realm of shadows
The Inevitable passed —
The eternal gulf of Mystery,
Which all must leap at last!