Christ taught an astonishing thing about physical death: not merely that it is an experience robbed of its terror but that as an experience it does not exist at all. To "sleep in Christ," like one that wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.

The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join, The innumerable caravan which moves, To that mysterious realm where each shall take, His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged by his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed, By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch, About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.

Yet will that beauteous image make The dreary sea less drear And thy remembered smile will wake The hope that tramples fear

The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows.