A death-bed ’s a detector of the heart

Life is the desert, life the solitude; Death joins us to the great majority.

Great let me call him, for he conquered me.

In records that defy the tooth of time.

Creation sleeps! 'Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause! prophetic of her end.

Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.

Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, With whom revenge is virtue.