thy love to come. He passes on. He dares not lay polluted hands upon
the dead, whose becalmed face is looking up to thee. The dead, the
sacred dead. The living are for the world, the dead are Thine. Incense,
and prayer, and psalms for the departed. It is respectful, but what heed
I? Man comes into the world only to go out thereof. What then? The
grave! Horror. I have preached thereof. I have shocked others with the
enormities of life until they clung unto the grave. Now, I who have
bidden the virtuous look to the hopes beyond it, myself would cry to
live. But no! they bear me on. He, the foul monster, grins as he looks
upon my outstretched limbs. Wolf, I'll pray for thee. Breathe, breathe
hardly, ye distended nostrils; it is your last pulsation with the air of
earth. No. Sealed as the marble figures by which they bear me. Is this
my Tomb. Is this the narrow house appointed for the living? Is this the
Abbot's palace after death? Nay, I pray thee, brethren, close me not up
in yon receptacle. Where the cold air might shiver on my flesh I may be
happy. Yon tomb is dark and dismal, shut from the eye of day. Louder and
louder grows your chant, I know its terminating cadence. It falls upon
mine ear. Take off this stony lid. Nay, I will knock, knock, knock. My
arms are still unraised. They hear me not. Brethren! men! christians!
no, monks, monks, monks, cold as the stone ye place upon my breast! Have
ye no ears? no hearts? Do I not shout? Do I not pray? Ah! my tongue is
one of marble. It is cold and fixed. They will not hear me. Listen!
their parting and receding steps. Nay, hasten not away. Silence. No. One
step is lingering behind. Thank God! I shout. Brother! what, ho! He
hears. Brother! He pauses. What ho! He goes. Brother! Silence is around,
hushed as my own attempts to burst a voice. Hark! a noise. No. Silence.
Is THIS TO BE DEAD?

* * * * *

Yet in the grave. Years have rolled away. Successors to my chair sleep
in the stony sepulchres around me. Monks whom I have awed or blessed,
slumber in death. Men, whom I have known not, walk in the cloisters I
have built. I am but mentioned as a thing that was--the memory of a
name. Enough. There is no communion among the dead. Methought the
spirits of the other world held converse on the joys they left on earth.
But all is still. I cannot hear a lament, even for a rotted bone. The
dead are tongue-tied. In yonder chancel sleeps a monarch, murdered by