University of Virginia Library

Empire of Death and nation of the Dead!
With trembling awe delightful, through thy realm
Unwarring, lighted by a flickering lamp,
Whose quivering flame just trembles on the verge
Of darkness, and displays unreal things,
I tread in silence, and my spirit feels
A luxury of terror, and a dread
Sublime in its infinitude, while o'er
This peaceful land where man hath learned to dwell
In quiet with his fellow, I with step
Soundless, wander to muse. 'Tis a dread place
For those whose puny spirits quail at death,
And his high attributes! O'er the damp walls
Flit shadows spectral, and the startled ear,
Tensely attentive, doth create wild sounds,
And tomb-like voices, whose strange language spells
The daunted heart, and fires the reeling brain
To agony; and on each side there stand
The mighty congregations of the dead;
Not phantoms as their spirits be, but still
Things of proportion as they were in life,
Though they move not as erst they did, from sense
Internal, but are swayed by passing things,
And speak in voices not their own; the forms,
Anciently seen upon the Earth, are now
Degenerated to that strange state which doth
Exist between the living and the things
In the world's creed thought dead. Sensations wild
And agonizing wake within the heart,
At maddening meditation on the fate
Mortality involves; and spirits proud
Quail at the glance of him whose chilling touch
Freezes both thought and feeling;—but I feel
A glory and a majesty, unfelt
Before, amid the Empire of the Dead.

Here all is peace; distinctions die with man,
And pride and power, and high and low lie down
Together like fond twins, and slumber here
Forgetful of degree; the Cardinal
And Count with Monk and Peasant sleep,
Undreaming of to-morrow's festival
Or hierarchal pomp; no crosiers here,
Nor coronets, nor gold cross robes, nor crowns
Of triple dominance, the humble garb
Of meek dependance mock; but lordly prince
And haughty priest lie side by side with him
Who chronicled in memory the high
Distinction, that he digged their 'scutcheoned graves.
This is the tomb of Nations; and upon
Yon broken statue I will sit me down,
And meditate on death; burn up, my lamp!
No Sun of life lights this vast darkling cave.
Methinks there is a mighty power within
My spirit, that I feel such glorious thoughts
Roll like sun-billows o'er my swelling brain.
The World, unthinking things, would call me mad!
And reprobate the act whose affluence
Of thought e'en Angels would be proud to own.
But, oh, thou Father of my soul! I bless
And worship thee that I'm not like the world.
When thy pure Spirit purifies my heart
From this life's blots, and liberates my soul
From mortal fardels, and doth place me where
I may be one of thy own Angel choir,
My theme of praise to thee shall ever be
That thou didst give to me a soul above
The sickening follies of this slaving World.

This subterranean mansion ages since
Was made to shield the persecuted race
Of humble Christian worshippers from rage
Of pagan bigotry: and oft, perchance,
The solitary follower of Him,
Who was the Prince of peace, hath sat alone
Where I do now in sadness, listening close
For sound of dread discovery, and the first
Object that met his wearied eye has been
A headless, mangled brother, or a child
Rescued from Vultures. Bitter was the bread
Of mortal sustenance, but sweet the pain
Suffered to those who felt a loftier range
Of being in this dungeon than the crowned
Despot who reigned o'er Earth-shadowing Rome.
The cold clay was their couch—the dripping rock
Their pillow, and their food the scant supplies
Of short occasion or quick passing chance;
And the sweet sympathies of life, the pure
Diffusion of fond tenderness and love,
The mingling of unwounded feelings, were
Few and unlasting; yet the unfaltering sense
Of Godlike piety cheered their hearts
And filled their spirits with a strong-winged faith,
Which rose to paradise amid the gloom
Of their long banishment.—Where are they now?
And where their foes, the mighty ones of Rome?
They sleep together in yon glittering piles
Of limbs and sculls, and he, who on the rack,
Or in the cauldron, or 'mid savage beasts
Perished, lies now beside his murderer
And links his bony hand with his who plied
The torture or the fire, or goaded on
The frenzied Lion, fiercest.—Senators
And Slaves, and Knights and Servitors, and high
Dames and their lowly damsels; meek and proud,
The wise man and the fool, and friend and foe,
The persecutor and the persecuted lie
Commingled indivisibly; and all
Who, living, waged eternal warfare—fierce
Banditti and their victims sleep in peace
Beside the mitred lords whose curses poured
Unceasingly against them; their rude wars
And bitter feuds, taunts, jeers and scoffings now
Are past; we hear of them as tales of death
Befitting only horror's wild romance.
And here I sit amid a perished world;
And 'tis, methinks, a better place to dwell
Within, than that polluted one they call
Land of the living; for a dead man shows
More nature and true tenderness in look,
Action and attitude, than the base herd,
Who cannot breathe save in a venomed air.
Death purifies the tainted heart, and sheds,
Not aromatic fragrance, but a balm
Of potency o'er poisoned hearts, and gives
Feelings of kindness to degraded souls.
The dead lie not; their speech and intercourse
Is silent but 'tis faithful; no poor forms
And ceremonies chain the bleeding heart
In converse with the slumbering sons of clay.
Acquaintance long and guarded there is none—
Ere one can speak a thought or do a deed
That chimes with his desire; and so I love
The dead as friends who ever speak the truth;
They give me better counsel than this vain
And prating world; and he, who lives among
The buried nations, doth derive his thought
Of might and grandeur from those fountains whence
Nor ill, nor wrong, nor malice, ever flow.
The silent eloquence of this lone place
Prepares the bodied spirit, which doth groan
And bleed below, for paradise; 'tis here
Man sees and feels the little thing he is.
Since the first hour of rising consciousness,
And tortured feeling and corroding thought,
When has the period been we did not wish
For Death as for a proud deliverer
From woes and agonies he never knew?
When has the time existed spirits high
Longed not to throw the fardels off of poor
Humanity, and live in glorious climes,
Fitting their own glorious nature? None
But cowards, slaves and villains dread the hand
That doth disrobe us of the blood-wet vest,
Which saturates our spirits with the gore
Of agony; the wretch who begs for life
I would contemn as one unfit to live.

In such a dome as this—the sepulchre
Of ages, it were glorious fate to die,
Beholding the assembly venerable
Of Roman lords and mitred saints, and all
The thorn-crowned martyrs smiling that their son,
Tired of the pains of time, and wearied out
With this world's crimes and miseries, had come
To join the council of the hall of Death.
Then should we look upon the maddening strife
For nothing, which corrodes our bleeding hearts,
With due derision; and contemplate all
Our hopes and purposes and proud desires,
And lofty feelings and aspiring thoughts,
And wasted hours and bitter sufferings,
As phantoms of a maniac's dream. Alas!
We cannot act ourselves; we are chained down
By fashions and by follies, and made dupes
Of action artificial; all is changed.
Than this delightful world, no fairer thing
Sprung from the plastic touch of Deity;
Amid the unbounded Universe there rolls
Creation none more beautiful; but, oh!
This fairy palace of delightful things
A lazaretto has been made by man,
Within whose loathsome porticoes and towers
Dwell want, disease and wretchedness and crime;
The balmy airs, that once flew fanning o'er
Its gardens of delight, and loved to kiss
The lovely creatures who, like Peris, roved
Around its fragrance breathing bowers, now move
Heavily on leaden wings amid the steam
Of the wide reeking pestilence; the songs
Of gladness that erst rose to Heaven are changed
To wailings of despairing misery.
And yet upon this scene of turbulence,
And war and sin and rank pollution, still
Heaven smiles as wont; and Angels ope the gemmed
Portals of Eden to console this world
Of self-inflicted pain, while they change not
From what they were in Time's young lovely days,
Save that they often weep that man should prove
The deadliest of foes to his own peace.

Night wanes in her dark circuit; and my lamp
Dimly illumines the lone catacomb.
And forth I must depart—to live again
Among the living of the sun-lit Earth.
Yet, oh ye mighty dead! I shall forget
Never your counsels; ye have been to me
Wiser and kinder than the breathing race,
And oft amid the volumed lore which doth
Survive all time, I've passed both day and night,
And gathered ample stores of knowledge pure
And alimental, which have been to me
A counterpoise to all my heart hath borne.

Farewell, ye dead! ye once were great, and Time,
When he watched o'er the growth and perfect glow
Of energies ye once possessed, beheld
No mightier things beneath the shadowing sky.
But ye are nothing now; and none can tell
Or name or lineage; so all must be,
And then be not; appear and vanish, like
The foamy wake, which a fleet sailing bark
Leaves murmuring a moment in its path.