hushed as my own attempts to burst a voice. Hark! a noise. No. Silence.
Is THIS TO BE DEAD?

* * * * *

Yet in the grave. Years have rolled away. Successors to my chair sleep
in the stony sepulchres around me. Monks whom I have awed or blessed,
slumber in death. Men, whom I have known not, walk in the cloisters I
have built. I am but mentioned as a thing that was--the memory of a
name. Enough. There is no communion among the dead. Methought the
spirits of the other world held converse on the joys they left on earth.
But all is still. I cannot hear a lament, even for a rotted bone. The
dead are tongue-tied. In yonder chancel sleeps a monarch, murdered by
bloody relations. Should not such a spirit shriek aloud for vengeance,
or weep a wailing for his destiny? But all is still. I hear no night owl
screech. Earth is the only dwelling place of noise. Death knows it not.
Methinks a shriek were music, a sigh were melody, a groan a feast. But
no. Time has almost used me to its sombre sameness. Is not time tired to
have gone so long the same unchanging course? I cannot move. My joints
are aching with continued rest. I cannot turn:--my sides are sunken in.
Would I could turn and crush them into bones with my reclining weight.
Is my heart sinful that it weighs down all my body. Is this the gnawing
and undying worm? Is THIS TO BE DEAD.

* * * * *

Six hundred years and still I am in the tomb. So much of man has sought
a refuge in the grave. I well may ask if life is yet on earth. Has man
degraded or is England ruined! I hear the footsteps of those that gaze
upon the stony sepulchres. I feel the glaring of their curious eyes