University of Virginia Library

The grave sends fascination with its fear:
We shrink and dread to see it yawning near,
But when on others falls the endless spell,
We like to talk about it mighty well;
And handle o'er, with fear-abated breath,
The gruesome, grim particulars of death.
Never can horror so a tale unfold,
But curious mortals love to hear it told,
As if they were not of the race they view,
And subject to the same conditions, too.
When the last speaker had a period found,
And placed his parson safely under-ground,
Mortality of every phase and age
Became at once the conversational rage;
And he was sachem of our gossip-tribe,
Who had the dolefulest death-pangs to describe.
Most well I recollect, of course (though least),
My own addition to the horror-feast.
I had seen two men hanged, for some red crime
Committed in drink's murder-harvest time;
By sheriff-usher through the jail-yard shown,
They walked unto this funeral of their own;
Their rites were said by one in priesthood's guise;
Two empty coffins lay before their eyes.
One scarcely yet had left youth's pleasure vale;
(His mother waited for him near the jail.)
The other had his tutor been in crime,
And sold the devil half a manhood's time.
They did not flinch, when first frowned on their sight
Their gallows death-bed, standing bolt-upright:
But when the youngster turned and took his place,
A cold wind brushed the noose against his face;
Then first that feigned indifference seemed to fail;
Death, when it came, made not the boy more pale.
(I saw him in the coffin, after this;
It was a face that woman-eyes would kiss.)
Close to his side, notice the older pass:
Teacher and pupil, standing in one class.
This rogue had learned a knack to calmly die,
And glanced the younger wretch a cold good-bye;
But he, unmagnetized from past control,
With silent-moving lips prayed for his soul.
(The black cap hid the last part of his prayer,
And shut it in, but could not keep it there.)
He had prayed for his body, had he known;
For while the older died without a groan,
When with a “thud!” the two went bounding high,
He struggled, gasped, and wailed, but could not die,
Till the slow-gripping rope had choked him quite,
And strong men fainted at the piteous sight.
(I thought I told this pretty middling well;
But was eclipsed by an old sea-dog swell,
Anchored by age in our calm rustic bay,
Who'd seen twelve Turks beheaded in one day.)
Then followed accidents, by field and flood,
Such as had fettered breath or loosened blood;
Fires, earthquakes, shipwrecks, and such cheerful themes,
Furnished material for our future dreams.
And when at last there came a little pause
(The silent horror-method of applause),
A lad, with face appropriately long,
Said, “Jacob, won't you sing that little song
That you sat up all t'other night to make,
About the children drownded in the lake?”
Jacob, whose efforts none had need to urge,
Promptly materialized the following dirge:

[A DIRGE OF THE LAKE.]