ODE TO A DEAD BODY.

RISE from the loathsome and devouring tomb!
Give up thy body, woman without heart!
Now that its worldly part

Is over; and deaf, blind, and dumb,

Thou servest worms for food,

And from thine altitude

Fierce Death hath shaken thee down, and thou dost fit

Thy bed within a pit!

Night, endless Night, hath got thee,

To clutch, and to englut thee;

And rottenness confounds

Thy limbs and their sleek rounds;

And thou art stuck there

stuck there, in despite :

Like a foul animal in a trap at night!

Come in the public path! and see how all

Shall fly thee as a child goes shrieking back

From something long and black

Which mocks along the wall.
See if the kind will stay,

To hear what thou wouldst say;

See if thine arms can win

One soul to think of sin;

See if the tribe of wooers

Will now become pursuers;

ODE TO A DEAD BODY.

And if, where they make way,

Thou'lt carry now the day.

Or whether thou wilt spread not such foul night,
That thou thyself shalt feel the shudder and the fright:

Yes, till thou turn into the loathly hole,
As the least pain to thy boldfacedness.
There let thy foul distress

Turn round upon thy soul,

And cry: O wretch in a shroud,

ODE TO A DEAD BODY.

That wast so headstrong proud!

This, this is the reward

For hearts that are so hard,
That flaunt so, and adorn
And pamper them, and scorn
To cast a thought down hither,

Where all things come to wither ;

And where no resting is, and no repentance,
Even to the day of the last awful sentence !

Where is that alabaster bosom now,
That undulated once like sea on shore?

'Tis clay unto the core.

Where are those sparkling eyes,

That were like twins o' th' skies?

Alas! two caves are they,

Filled only with dismay.

Where is the lip that shone

Like painting newly done?

Where the round cheek? and where

The sunny locks of hair?

And where the symmetry that bore them all?

Gone like the broken clouds when the winds fall.

Did I not tell thee this, over and over:

The time will come when thou wilt not be fair,

Nor have that conquering air,

Nor be supplied with lover?

Lo now! behold the fruit

Of all that scorn of shame!

Is there one spot the same

ODE TO A DEAD BODY.

In all that fondled flesh?

One limb that's not a mesh

Of worms, and sore offence,

And horrible succulence?

Tell me is there one jot, one jot remaining,

To show thy lovers now the shapes which thou wast vain in?

Love? - Heaven should be implored for something else: For power to weep, and to bow down one's soul.

Love?'Tis a fiery dole,

A punishment like Hell's.

Yet thou, puffed with thy power,

Who wert but as the flower

That warns us in the Psalm,

Didst think thy veins ran balm

From an immortal fount;

Didst take on thee to mount

Upon an angel's wings:

When thou wert but as things

Clapped, on a day, in Egypt's catalogue,
Under the worshipped nature of a dog.

Ill would it help thee now, were I to say:

Go! weep at thy confessor's feet! and cry

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Help, father, or I die!

See, see! he knows his prey!

Even he, the dragon old!
O, be thou a stronghold
Betwixt my foe and me!
For I would fain be free;

But am so bound in ill,

ODE TO A DEAD BODY.

That, struggle as I will,

It strains me to the last,

And I am losing fast

My breath and my poor soul; and thou art he
Alone canst save me in thy piety."

But thou didst smile, perhaps, thou thing besotted !
Because, with some, death is a sleep, a word.

Hast thou, then, ever heard

Of one that slept and rotted?
Rare is the sleeping face

That wakes not as it was.

Thou shouldst have earned high Heaven;

And then thou mightst have given

Glad looks below, and seen

Thy buried bones, serene,

As odorous and as fair

As evening lilies are;

And in the day of the great trump of Doom
Happy thy soul had been to join them at the tomb.

ODE, go thou down, and enter

The horrors of the centre:

Then fly amain, with news of terrible fate,

To those who think they may repent them late.

Translation of LEIGH HUNT.

ANDREA DEL BASSO. (Italian.)