The lady lay in her bed,

Her couch so warm and soft,

But her sleep was restless and broken still;

For turning often and oft

From side to side, she mutter’d and moan’d,

And toss’d her arms aloft.

At last she startled up,

And gazed on the vacant air,

With a look of awe, as if she saw

Some dreadful phantom there —

And then in the pillow she buried her face

From visions ill to bear.

The very curtain shook,

Her terror was so extreme;

And the light that fell on the broider’d quilt

Kept a tremulous gleam;

And her voice was hollow, and shook as she cried:—

“Oh me! that awful dream”!

“That weary, weary walk,

In the churchyard’s dismal ground!

And those horrible things, with shady wings,

That came and flitted round —

Death, death, and nothing but death,

In every sight and sound!

“And oh! those maidens young,

Who wrought in that dreary room,

With figures drooping and spectres thin,

And cheeks without a bloom; —

And the Voice that cried, ‘For the pomp of pride,

We haste to an early tomb!

“‘For the pomp and pleasure of Pride,

We toil like Afric slaves,

And only to earn a home at last,

Where yonder cypress waves;’—

And then they pointed — I never saw

A ground so full of graves!

“And still the coffins came,

With their sorrowful trains and slow;

Coffin after coffin still,

A sad and sickening show;

From grief exempt, I never had dreamt

Of such a World of Woe!

“Of the hearts that daily break,

Of the tears that hourly fall,

Of the many, many troubles of life,

That grieve this earthly ball —

Disease and Hunger, and Pain, and Want,

But now I dreamt of them all!

“For the blind and the cripple were there,

And the babe that pined for bread,

And the houseless man............