A cypress-bough, and a rose-wreath sweet, A wedding-robe, and a winding-sheet, A bridal bed and a bier. Thine be the kisses, maid, And smiling Love’s… - Thomas Lovell Beddoes

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 there were dreams to sell, What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell; Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life’s fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell, What would you buy?A cottage lone and still, With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still, Until I die.
Such pearl from Life’s fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill, This would I buy.

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?