University of Virginia Library

Was it some effluence of the mood and time,
That seemed even now to lighten through my rhyme?
Alas, that mood is o'er!
I dreamed last night that in a minster old
One wandered with me, and I said, “Come down
Into the Charnel Royal, and behold
The ancient Monarch with his carven crown,
Where he lies stately on his sepulchre!”
And we went down, but lo! the tomb was gone
That I remembered, though the broad flat stone,
Whereon it stood, remained; and underneath
We knew that ancient Monarch slept in death.
And kneeling down among the bones of kings,
And skulls still crowned, and gilt moth-eaten things,
That once were robes of Princes, here and there
With ruby, topaz, emerald glistening still,—
We swept aside into a little hill
The kingly dust from off that marble square,
And read the runes that in clear-chiselled rhyme
Fringed that old Empire's last gray coverlid,
Though all the words of that forgotten time
Were in the tongue that none can understand
Save the dead only:—but the glittering sand,
Full in the centre of the stone, as though
There stirred beneath some living creature hid,
Shook tremblingly, and lo!
We read thy name there, Thackeray, carven deep,
And knew thee, lying low,
Among thy brethren in that sovran sleep!
Then, through the rounded window, in the green
And sunlit churchyard I beheld the tomb
That I remembered,—from the charnel gloom
Unflawed, forth-lifted into God's free air,
And marvelled that I knew not Thou hadst been
Even of old the crowned One sculptured there.