’Mild was the slow necessity of death: 
The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 60
And full of wonder, full of hope as he. 
The deadly germs of languor and disease
Died in the human frame, and Purity
Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers. 
How vigorous then the athletic form of age! 65
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow! 
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time. 
How lovely the intrepid front of youth! 70
Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;—­
Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,
And elevated will, that journeyed on
Through life’s phantasmal scene in fearlessness,
With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. 75

’Then, that sweet bondage which is Freedom’s self,
And rivets with sensation’s softest tie
The kindred sympathies of human souls,
Needed no fetters of tyrannic law: 
Those delicate and timid impulses 80
In Nature’s primal modesty arose,
And with undoubted confidence disclosed
The growing longings of its dawning love,
Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,
That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, 85
Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. 
No longer prostitution’s venomed bane
Poisoned the springs of happiness and life;
Woman and man, in confidence and love,
Equal and free and pure together trod 90
The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more
Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim’s feet.

’Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride
The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked
Famine’s faint groan, and Penury’s silent tear, 95
A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw
Year after year their stones upon the field,
Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves
Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower
Usurped the royal ensign’s grandeur, shook 100
In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower
And whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind’s ear. 
’Low through the lone cathedral’s roofless aisles
The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung: 
It were a sight of awfulness to see 105
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal! 
Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. 
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above 110
To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life:  to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.