A small, pale hand brushes against the lock, lengthens, and with one finger upsets my sleeping-draught. Discreetly a light foot tiptoes by. I call. But there is no reply. Can it be that it is snowing in my warm room? Disdainfully Death sits beside my fire, he waits my hour, his tower of little bones, ranged on my chair, gleams in the embers glare like a plant of strawberries. On his knees a living toy he dances that twinkles and blinks and gives soft glances. Tinkle of bells. . . . Is this delirium? Are the horses there? Has the hour for departure come? No, 'tis Death that rises. The slim tower rocks. It is white and rose like a minaret. No, Death stands, all his joints he cracks, he stoops on a moon-stone his toy to whet. -- Good, he touches my shoulder, calm and steady. "My son, are you ready?" Inadvertently, a little random blow of that glistening plaything sets my spirit free, and I can feel it go, in rhythmic ecstacy, to wash its linen in the light of the moon. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HEROIC LOVE by JAMES GRAHAM (1612-1650) THE USE OF FLOWERS by MARY HOWITT ON HIS BEING [OR, HAVING] ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE by JOHN MILTON SONNET TO MASTER GABRIELL HARVEY, DOCTOR OF LAWES by EDMUND SPENSER THE SHEPHEARDES CALENDER: JANUARY by EDMUND SPENSER NATIONAL ODE; INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA by BAYARD TAYLOR |