Might fancy me dead

Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,

The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now,

With that horrible throbbing

At heart:-ah, that horrible,

Horrible throbbing !

The sickness-the nausea

The pitiless pain—

Have ceased, with the fever

That maddened my brain

With the fever called “Living" That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures

That torture the worst

Has abated-the terrible

Torture of thirst

For the napthaline river

Of Passion accurst :

I have drunk of a water

That quenches all thirst :

Of a water that flows,

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground

From a cavern not very far

Down under ground.

And ah! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy,

And narrow my bed;

For man never slept

In a different bed

And, to sleep, you must slumber

In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit

Here blandly reposes,

Forgetting, or never

Regretting its roses

Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses :

For now, while so quietly

Lying, it fancies

A holier odour

About it, of pansies

A rosemary odour,

Commingled with pansies

With rue and the beautiful

Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of Annie—

Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm—
To the queen of the angels
To shield me from harm.