After Paradise or Legends of Exile :: :: University of Virginia Library

To breed new horrors in this hideous lair
Of Desolation?” And they all replied
“Thine is our name, for thine our Legions were,
And thine would still be, if thou hadst not died.
But corpse or ghost thou art thyself, and how
Should we thy death survive? It is not well
When the dead do not know the dead, nor know
The date of their own death-day, Uriel!
Our leader bold in many a fight wast thou,
And we fought bravely. But thy foes and ours
Were strongest. And the strife is over now,
And we be all dead men. And those tall towers
We built are fallen, all our banners torn,
All our swords broken, all our strong watch fires
Quencht, and in death have we been left forlorn
Of sepulture, tho' sons of princely sires,
Born to find burial fair with saints and kings,
Where, over trophied tombs, the taper shines

199

On tablets rich with votive offerings,
And priestly perfumes soothe memorial shrines.
And that is why we cannot find repose
In the bare quiet of unburied death;
But ever, when at night the wild wind blows
Upon the barren bosom of this heath,
Our dead flesh tingles, and revives, and glows
With the brief passion of a borrow'd breath,
Breathed by the wind: and on as the wind goes
Go with the wind we must, where'er that be,
A lonesome pilgrimage along the night,
Till the wind falls again, and with it we.
Farewell!”