Poems (Eckley)/Death's Studio
ARD by St. Bernard's lonely convent looms
The Ossuary, amid deep frozen glooms;
The windows barred, nor glazed to shivering blast,
That wails its requiem through the chambers vast.
The dead are here,—but not outstretched on form,
Not coffined for the banquet of the worm—
Death is the sculptor! this his studio grand!
For no decay is here—these statues stand
In groups; a mother tightly clasps her child—
Death could not sunder, so he only smiled.
Some crouch, bent double by the weight of snows,
Transfixed for ever in that strange repose;
Vain were those shrieks, unheard through deafening roar
Of sweeping avalanche, below "Mont Mort!"
DEATH'S STUDIO.
ARD by St. Bernard's lonely convent loomsThe Ossuary, amid deep frozen glooms;
The windows barred, nor glazed to shivering blast,
That wails its requiem through the chambers vast.
The dead are here,—but not outstretched on form,
Not coffined for the banquet of the worm—
Death is the sculptor! this his studio grand!
For no decay is here—these statues stand
In groups; a mother tightly clasps her child—
Death could not sunder, so he only smiled.
Some crouch, bent double by the weight of snows,
Transfixed for ever in that strange repose;
Vain were those shrieks, unheard through deafening roar
Of sweeping avalanche, below "Mont Mort!"