A ghost, that loved a lady fair, Ever in the starry air Of midnight at her pillow stood; And, with a sweetness skies above The luring words of human … - Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Is it not sweet to die? for, what is death,
But sighing that we ne’er may sigh again,
Getting a length beyond our tedious selves;
But trampling the last tear from poisonous sorrow,
Spilling our woes, crushing our frozen hopes,
And passing like an incense out of man?
Then, if the body felt, what were its sense,
Turning to daisies gently in the grave,
If not the soul’s most delicate delight
When it does filtrate, through the pores of thought,
In love and the enamelled flowers of song?

Shivering in fever, weak, and parched to sand,
My ears, those entrances of word-dressed thoughts,
My pictured eyes, and my assuring touch,
Fell from me, and my body turned me forth
From its beloved abode: then I was dead;
And in my grave beside my corpse I sat,
In vain attempting to return: meantime
There came the untimely spectres of two babes,
And played in my abandoned body’s ruins;
They went away; and, one by one, by snakes
My limbs were swallowed; and, at last, I sat
With only one, blue-eyed, curled round my ribs,
Eating the last remainder of my heart,
And hissing to himself. O sleep, thou fiend!
Thou blackness of the night! how sad and frightful
Are these thy dreams!

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart, Then sleep, dear, sleep;
And not a sorrow Hang any tear on your eyelashes; Lie still and deep, Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o’ the sun to-morrow, In eastern sky.But wilt thou cure thine heart
Of love and all its smart, Then die, dear, die;
’Tis deeper, sweeter, Than on a rose-bank to lie dreaming With folded eye; And there alone, amid the beaming
Of Love’s stars, thou’lt meet her In eastern sky.