Classic Poem

O for Elijah's car, to wing my way
O'er the dark gulf of Death, to endless day!
A thousand ways, alas! frail mortals lead
To her dire den, and dreadful all to tread!
See! in the horrors of yon house of woes,
Troops of all maladies the fiend enclose!
High on a trophy rais'd of human bones,
Swords, spears, and arrows, and sepulchral stones,
In horrid state she reigns! attendant ills
Besiege her throne, and when she frowns she kills.
Thro' the thick gloom the torch red-gleaming burns;
O'er shrouds, and sable palls, and mould'ring urns;
While flowing stoles, black plumes, and scutcheons, spread
An idle pomp around the silent dead.
Unaw'd by pow'r, in common heaps she flings
The scrips of beggars and the crowns of kings,
Here gales of sighs, instead of breezes, blow,
And streams of tears for ever murm'ring flow:
The mournful yew with solemn horror waves;
His baleful branches sadd'ning e'en the graves:
Around all birds obscene, loud screaming fly,
Clang their black wings, and shriek along the sky:
The ground perverse, tho' bare and barren breeds
All poisons foes to life, and noxious weeds;
But blasted frequent by th' unwholesome sky,
Dead fall the birds, the very poisons die!
Full in the entrance of the dreadful doors,
Old Age half vanish'd to a ghost, deplores;
Propp'd on his crutch, he drags, with many a groan,
The load of life, yet dreads to lay it down.
There, downward driving an unnumber'd band,
Intemp'rance and Disease walk hand in hand;
These Torment, whirling with remorleless sway
A scourge of iron, lashes on the way.
There frantic Anger, prone to wild extremes,
Grasps an ensanguin'd sword, and heaven blasphemes:
There heart-sick Agony distorted stands,
Writhes his convulsive limbs and wrings his hands:
There Sorrow droops his ever-pensive head,
And Care still tosses on his iron bed.
Or musing, fastens on the ground his eye,
With folded arms, with ev'ry breath a sigh:
Hydrops unweildy wallows in the flood,
And Murder rages, red with human blood:
With Fever, Famine, and afflictive Pain,
Plague, Pestilence, and War, a dismal train!
These and a thousand more the fiend surround,
Shrieks pierce the air, and groans to groans resound.
O heav'ns! is this the passage to the skies
That man must tread, when man your fav'rite dies?
Oh for Elijah's car, to wing my way
O'er the dark gulf of Death, to endless day!
Confounded at the fight, my spirits fled,
My eyes rain'd tears, my very heart was dead;
I wail'd the lot of man, that all would shun,
And all must bear that breathe beneath the sun.
When lo! an heavenly form, divinely fair,
Shoots from the starry vault thro' fields of air,
And, swifter than on wings of lightning driv'n,
At once seems here and there, in earth and heaven!
A dazzling brightness, in resulgent streams,
Flows from his locks inwreath'd with sunny beams;
His roseate cheeks the bloom of heaven display,
And from his eyes dart glories more than day;
A robe of light conden, d around him shone,
And his loins glitter'd with a starry zone;
And while the list'ning winds lay hush'd to hear,
Thus spoke the vision, amiably severe!
“Vain man! wouldst thou escape the common lot,
“To live, to suffer, die, and be forgot?
“Look back on ancient times, primeval years,
“All, all are past a might; void appears!
“Heroes and kings, those gods of earth, whose fame
“Av'd half the nations, now are but a name!
“The great in arts or arms, the wise, the just,
“Mix with the meanest in congenial dust!
“E'en saints and prophets the same paths have trod,
“Ambassadors of heav'n, and friends of God!
“And thou, wouldst thou the gen'ral sentence fly!
“Moses is dead! thy Saviour deign'd to die!
“Mortal! in all thy acts regard thy end;
“Live well the time thou liv'st, and Death's thy friend.
“Then curb each rebel thought against the sky,
“And die resign'd, O man! ordain'd to die.”
“Headded not, but spread his wings in flight,
And vanish'd instant in a blaze of light.
Abash'd, asham'd, I cry, “Eternal Pow'r!
“I yield; I wait resign'd th' appointed hour.”
Man, foolish man! no more thy soul deceive;
To die is but the surest way to live.
When age we ask, we ask it in our wrong,
And pray our time of suff'ring may be long;
The nauseous draught and dregs of life to drain,
And feel infirmity and length of pain.
What art thou, Life! that we should court thy stay?
A breath one single gasp must puff away!
A short-liv'd flow'r, that with the day must fade!
A fleeting vapour, and an empty shade!
A stream that silently but swiftly glides,
To meet eternity's immeasur'd tides!
A being lost alike by pain or joy!
A fly can kill it, or a worm destroy!
Impair'd by labour, and by ease undone,
Commenc'd in tears, and ended in a groan!
E'en while I write, the transient now is past,
And death more near this sentence than the last!
As some weak isthmus seas from seas divides,
Beat by rude waves and sapp'd by rushing tides,
Torn from its base no more their fury bears,
At once they close, at once it disappears:
Such, such is life! the mark of misery plac'd
Between two worlds, the future and the past:
To time, to sickness, and to death a prey,
It sinks, the frail possession of a day!
As some fond boy, in sport, along the shore
Builds from the sands a fabric of an hour,
Proud of his spacious walls and stately rooms,
He styles the mimic cells imperial domes,
The little monarch swells with fancy'd sway,
Till some wind rising puffs the dome away;
So the poor reptile, man! an heir of woe!
The lord of earth and ocean! swells in show!
He plants, he builds; aloft the walls arise;
The noble plan he finishes, and—dies:
Swept from the earth, he shares the common fate,
His sole distinction now to rot in state!
Thus busy to no end, till, out of breath,
Tir'd we lie down, and close up all in death!
Then bless'd the man whom gracious heaven has led
Thro' life's blind mazes to th' immortal dead!
Who safely landed on the blissful shore,
Nor human folly feels, nor frailty more!
O Death! thou cure of all our idle strife,
End of the gay or serious farce or life!
Wish of the just, and refuge of the opprest!
Where poverty and where e'en kings find rest!
Safe from the frowns of pow'r, calm thoughtful hate,
And the rude insults of the scornful great,
The grave is sacred! Wrath and Malice dread
To violate its peace and wrong the dead.
But, Life! thy name is Woe! to death we fly
To grow immortal—into life we die!
Then wisely heaven in silence has confin'd
The happier dead, lest none should stay behind.
What tho' the path be dark that must be trod,
Tho' man be blotted from the works of God,
Tho' the four wings his scatter'd atoms bear
To earth's extremes thro' all th' expanse of air?
Yet bursting glorious from the silent clay,
He mounts triumphant to eternal day.
So when the sun rolls down th' ethereal plain,
Extinct his splendors in the whelming main,
A transient night, earth, air, and heav'n, invades,
Eclips d in horrors of surrounding shades,
But soon emerging with a fresher ray
He starts exultant and renews the day.