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Wake not the Dead: —they bring but gloomy night And cheerless desolation into day; For in the grave who mouldering lay, No more can feel the influence of light, Or yield them to the sun’s prolific might; Let them repose within their house of clay— Corruption, vainly wilt thou e’er essay To quicken: —it sends forth a pest’lent blight; And neither fiery sun, nor bathing dew, Nor breath of spring the dead can e’er renew. That which from life is pluck’d, becomes the foe Of life, and whoso wakes it waketh woe. Seek not the dead to waken from that sleep In which from mortal eye they lie enshrouded deep. “Wilt thou for ever sleep? Wilt thou never more awake, my beloved, but henceforth repose for ever from thy short pilgrimage on earth? O yet once again return! and bring back with thee the vivifying dawn of hope to one whose existence hath, since thy departure, been obscured by the dunnest shades. What! dumb? for ever dumb? Thy friend lamenteth, and thou heedest him not? He sheds bitter, scalding tears, and thou reposest unregarding his affliction? He is in despair, and thou no longer openest thy arms to him as an asylum from his grief? Say then, doth the paly shroud become thee better than the bridal veil? Is the chamber of the grave a warmer bed than the couch of love? Is the spectre death more welcome to thy arms than thy enamoured consort? Oh! return, my beloved, return once again to this anxious disconsolate bosom.” Wake Not the Dead. (1823) Ernst Benjamin Salomo Raupach.
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