 | The Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott
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XXXIX.
I dream'd that God was Silence. Air was dead,
And Life a corpse laid out. The clouds had died
Of sunless cold. O'er all things snow was spread,
Mute as the billows of a frozen sea;
And, voiceless, the eternal wind swept wide
Under dumb skies, o'er steel-like sea and land.
Echo herself had perish'd, but reply
From her none needed was, where time forgot
The letters of his name, and sound was not,
And motion soundless; and all victory
Crown'd freezing Death, who, with world-covering hand,
And sword-like pen—and with an inward laugh—
On Mind's vast grave, wrote dead Hope's epitaph
In ice for ink: “Her Dream was Liberty.”
| The Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott
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