“When boys go first to bed,
They step into their voluntary graves;
Sleep binds them fast; only their breath
Makes them not dead.
Successive nights, like rolling waves,
Convey them quickly, who are bound for death.”
Ye children, does death ever alarm you? asks the venerable pastor in
Tegner’s _Children of the Lord’s Supper_: “Death is the brother of Love,
twin-brother is he, and is only more austere to behold.” Shakspeare’s
nobleman is gazing with disgust on a sottish sleeper, when he exclaims,
“Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!” That image, as
embodied in the form of a little child, has often inspired poets to
strains of tender admiration. Malaspina, in one of Landor’s unacted (not
to say, with almost equal truth, unread) plays thus contemplates, and
apostrophizes, such an image:—
“And still thou sleepest, my sweet babe! Is death
Like sleep? Ah, who then, who would fear to die?
How beautiful is all serenity!
Sleep, a child’s sleep, oh how far more serene,
And oh, how far more beautiful than any!
Whether we breathe so gently, or breathe not,
Slight is the difference.”
More familiar to every one in the least conversant with current
literature—not ephemeral in its currency, or running so fast as to
be, like that which decayeth and waxeth old, ready to vanish away—is
Mrs. Browning’s poem on a sleeping child—tired out with playing, and
slumbering on the floor; the latter portion alone of which may here find
room:—
“And God knows, who sees us twain, child at childish leisure,
I am near as tired of pain, as you seem of pleasure;—
Very soon, too, by His grace gently wrapt around me,
Shall I show as calm a face, shall I sleep as soundly!
Differing in this, that you clasp your playthings sleeping,
While my hand shall drop the few given to my keeping.
Differing in this, that I sleeping shall be colder,
And in waking presently, brighter to beholder.
Differing in this beside (sleeper, have you heard me?
Do you move, and open wide eyes of wonder toward me?)—
That while you I thus recall from your sleep,—I solely,—
Me from mine an angel shall, with reveille holy!”
_ELIAB AND DAVID IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH._