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FUNERALS, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: It was a vision of the night
Last Line: Dread witness of a judgment hour!


I.
It was a vision of the night,
Ten years ago-
A vision of dim FUNERALS, that passed,
In troubled sleep, before my sight,
With dirges and deep wails of woe,
That never died upon the blast!


II.
Swiftly not as with march that marks
The earthly hearse,
Each FUNERAL swept onward to its goa
But, oh! no horror overdarks
The stanzas of my gloomsome verse,
Like that which then weighed down my soul!


III.
It was as though my life were gone
With what I saw!
Here were the FUNERALS of my thoughts as well!
The dead and I at last were one!
An ecstacy of chilling awe
Mastered my spirit as a spell!


IV .
On, on, still on and on they swept,
Silently, save When the long FUNERAL chaunt rose up to heaven,
Or some wild mourner shrieked and wept;
Earth had become one groanful grave-
The isles and lands were left bereaven!


V.
And on each hearse there sat enthroned
A skeleton!
The FUNERALS showed him by a lurid gleam,
And round each stood, as ' twere enzoned,
Others, the like, so many a one
They might have peopled worlds of dream!


VI.
And towards the west at first they marched,
Then towards the south,
Those endless FUNERALS , till the sky o'erhead,
As one vast pall, seemed overarched
With blackness, and methought the mouth
Of Hades had cast up its dead!


VII.
And one night passed , and there was day
So dreamt I there!
The FUNERALS, then, had been but phantoms all-
How cheats imagination's play!
Give her illusions, thou, no care,
Oh, man! but harken reason's call!


VIII.
But night fell dark on earth once more,
And many a night,
And still the FUNERALS knew nor pause nor change;
And ever nightly, as before,
I again felt dead to mark a sight,
So terrible, so dread, so strange!


IX.
What was this mystery? Years would seem
To have rolled away,
Before those FUNERALS halted on their path
Were they but mockeries of a dream?
Or did the vision darkly say,
That here were signs of looming wrath?


X.
I know not! but within the soul
I know there lives
A deep, a marvellous, a prophetic power,
Far beyond even its own control-
And why? Perchance, because it gives
Dread witness of a JUDGMENT HOUR!






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