—­Fool!  I reply, accept your fate,
  And be not so immoderate. 
  Perhaps ’twould suit your high behest
  If some one, for a common jest,
  Would take you, stove and all, away
  And set you up there on the sleigh,
  With all the family round you too: 
  Man, woman, child—­the whole blest crew! 
  Old image, what! so shameless yet,
  And prone on gauds your mind to set? 
  Think on your latter end at last! 
  Your hundredth year’s already past.

* * * * *

  THINK OF IT, MY SOUL![30] (1852)

  Somewhere a pine is green,
  Just where who knoweth,
  And in a garth unseen
  A rose-tree bloweth. 
  These are ordained for thee—­
  Think, oh soul, fixedly—­
  Over thy grave to be;
  Swift the time floweth.

  Two black steeds on the down
  Briskly are faring,
  Or on their way to town
  Canter uncaring. 
  These may with heavy tread
  Slowly convey the dead
  E’en ere the shoes be shed
  They now are wearing.

* * * * *

  ERINNA TO SAPPHO[31] (1863)

  (Erinna was a Greek poetess, a friend and pupil of Sappho of Lesbos. 
  She died at the age of nineteen.)

  “Many the paths to Hades,” an ancient proverb
  Tells us, “and one of them thou thyself shalt follow,
  Doubt not!” My sweetest Sappho, who can doubt it? 
  Tells not each day the old tale? 
  Yet the foreboding word in a youthful bosom
  Rankles not, as a fisher bred by the seashore,
  Deafened by use, perceives the breaker’s thunder no more. 
  —­Strangely, however, today my heart misgave me.  Attend: 
  Sunny the glow of morn-tide, pouring
  Through the trees of my well-walled garden,
  Roused the slugabed (so of late thou calledst Erinna)
  Early up from her sultry couch. 
  Full was my soul of quiet, although my blood beat
  Quick with uncertain waves o’er the thin cheek’s pallor. 
  Then, as I loosed the plaits of my shining tresses,
  Parting with nard-moist comb above my forehead
  The veil of hair—­in the glass my own glance met me. 
  Eyes, strange eyes, I said, what will ye? 
  Spirit of me, that within there dwelled securely as yet,
  Occultly wed to my living senses—­
  Demon-like, half smiling thy solemn message,
  Thou dost nod to me, Death presaging! 
  —­Ha! all at once like lightning a thrill went through me,
  Or as a deadly arrow with sable feathers
  Whizzing had grazed my temples,
  So that, with hands pressed over my face, a long time
  Dumb-struck I sat, while my thought reeled at the frightful abyss.

  Tearless at first I pondered,
  Weighing the terror of Death;
  Till I bethought me of thee, my Sappho,
  And of my comrades all,
  And of the muses’ lore,
  When straightway the tears ran fast.