MY SOUL IS EXCEEDING SAD EVEN UNTO DEATH

Translated from Lamartine, by sir Tollemache Sinclair. In silence round our dwelling speeds the night which lowers, In heaven's vault 'tis by far the darkest of the hours, On my eyes from the firmament a beam falls chill. The breeze yields not e'en one groan my great grief to still. One sigh to say to my sad soul depressed as it. Something dies with thee and mourns in the shades which flit. Outside the melancholy sound alone I hear Of the clock's movement which says time flies fast, 'tis drear. And inside there's the pulse, the pendulum of life. Whose fitful beats in my numbed temples, tired of strife. Announce that without sound the fingers of grim Death Have pierced the spring of the machine called man, its breath. That like the carriage run away with by a horse, 'Tis but to break it fully that it speeds its course. And this, then, is the end ? Ah ! if it needs to be, That each man in his turn should speak e'er he must flee, 'Tis then ere in cold earth a dark and clammy shroud, Inters with him his last thoughts wrapt in sorrow's cloud, 'Tis at that very hour when with one's latest breath, Each soul its secret keeps which it would tell at death, Its word to say to this sad world, to death, to life, E'er it's for ever vanished and gone far from strife,

Madame P'itzhekiîert (épouse morganatique de Georges IV.)

(Par Cosway)

Miniature dans la possession de Sir Tollemache Sinclair

LAUMI'S ET SOUUIHES 391

Ere it's extinct like fires that glare at night around, Which do not leave behind them either light or sound. What then survives us, oh drear life, when thou tak'st wing ? Nought, but the light sounds of the last sad words now ring.

Ah ! e'en were there a wakening to this last sleep's span. Fate we'd defy to make aught that is worse than man.