The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt/Reflections of a Dead Body
REFLECTIONS OF A DEAD BODY.
Scene.—A female sitting by a bed-side, anxiously looking at the face of her husband, just dead. The soul within the dead body soliloquizes.
What change is this! What joy! What depth of rest!What suddenness of withdrawal from all painInto all bliss? into a balm so perfectI do not even smile! I tried but now,With that breath's end, to speak to the dear faceThat watches me—and lo! all in an instant,Instead of toil, and a weak, weltering tear,I am all peace, all happiness, all power,Laid on some throne in space.—Great God! I am dead.[A pause.] Dear God! thy love is perfect; thy truth known.[Another.] And He,—and they!—How simple and strange! How beautiful!But I may whisper it not,—even to thought;Lest strong imagination, hearing it,Speak, and the world be shatter'd.[Soul again pauses.] O balm! O bliss! O saturating smileUnsmiling! O doubt ended! certaintyBegun! O will, faultless, yet all indulged,Encourag'd to be wilful;—to delayEven its wings for heav'n; and thus to restHere, here, ev'n here,—'twixt heav'n and earth awhile,A bed in the morn of endless happiness I feel warm drops falling upon my face:They reach me through the rapture of this cold.—My wife! my love!—'tis for the best thou canst notKnow how I know thee weeping, and how fondA kiss meets thine in these unowning lips.Ah, truly was my love what thou didst hope it,And more; and so was thine—I read it all—And our small feuds were but impatiencesAt seeing the dear truth ill understood.Poor sweet! thou blamest now thyself, and heapestMemory on memory of imagin'd wrong,As I should have done too,—as all who love;And yet I cannot pity thee:—so wellI know the end, and how thou 'lt smile hereafter.
She speaks my name at last, as though she fear'dThe terrible, familiar sound; and sinksIn sobs upon my bosom. Hold me fast,Hold me fast, sweet, and from the extreme grow calm,—Me, cruelly unmov'd, and yet how loving!
How wrong I was to quarrel with poor James!And how dear Francis mistook me! That pride,How without ground it was! Those arguments,Which I suppos'd so final, oh how foolish!Yet gentlest Death will not permit rebuke,Ev'n of one's self. They 'll know all, as I know,When they lie thus.Colder I grow, and happier.Warmness and sense are drawing to a point,Ere they depart;—myself quitting myself.The soul gathers its wings upon the edgeOf the new world, yet how assuredly!Oh! how in balm I change! actively will'd,Yet passive, quite; and feeling opposites mingleIn exquisitest peace!—Those fleshly clothes, Which late I thought myself, lie more and moreApart from this warm, sweet, retreating me,Who am as a hand, withdrawing from a glove.
So lay my mother: so my father: soMy children: yet I pitied them. I wept,And fancied them in graves, and call'd them "poor!"
O graves! O tears! O knowledge, will, and time,And fear, and hope! what petty terms of earthWere ye! yet how I love ye as of earth,The planet's household words; and how postpone,Till out of these dear arms, th' immeasurableTongue of the all-possessing smile eternal!Ah, not excluding these, nor aught that's past,Nor aught that's present, nor that's yet to come,Well waited for. I would not stir a fingerOut of this rest, to re-assure all anguish;Such warrant hath it; such divine conjuncture;Such a charm binds it with the needs of bliss.
That was my eldest boy's—that kiss. And thatThe baby with its little unweening mouth;And those—and those—Dear hearts! they have all come,And think me dead—me, who so know I'm living,The vitalest creature in this fleshly room.I part; and with my spirit's eyes, full open'd,Will look upon them.[Spirit parts from the body, and breathes upon their eyes.Patient be those tears,Fresh heart-dews, standing on these dear clay-mouldsOf souls made of myself,—made of us bothIn the half-heavenly time. I quit ye butTo meet again, and will revisit soonIn many a dream, and many a gentle sigh.[Spirit looks at the body. And was that me?—that hollow-cheek'd pale thing,Shatter'd with passions, worn with cares; now placidWith my divine departure? And must loveThink of thee painfully? of stifling boards'Gainst the free face, and of the irreverent worm?To dust with thee, poor corpse! to dust and grass,And the glad innocent worm, that does its dutyAs thou dost thine in changing. I thy life,Life of thy life, bird of the bird, ah ha!Turn my face forth to heav'n—ah ha! ah ha!Oh the infinitude and the eternity!The dimpled air! the measureless conscious heaven!The endless possession! the sweet, mad, fawning planets[It speaks with a hurried vehemence of rapture.Sleeking, like necks, round the beatitudes of the ubiquitous sun-godWith bee-music of innumerable organ-thunders,And the travelling crowds this way, like a life-tempest,With rapid angelical faces, two in one,Ah ah! ah ha! and the stillness beyond the stars—My Friend! my Mother!—I mingle through the roar.[Spirit vanishes.