work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context 7401,"",Reading,2013-06-06 14:22:05 UTC,"Then welcome, Death, thy dreaded harbingers,
Age and Disease: Disease, though long my guest,--
That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life;
Which, pluck'd a little more, will toll the bell
That calls my few friends to my funeral
;
Where feeble Nature drops, perhaps, a tear,
While Reason and Religion, better taught,
Congratulate the dead, and crown his tomb
With wreath triumphant. Death is victory;
It binds in chains the raging ills of life:
Lust and Ambition, Wrath and Avarice,
Dragg'd at his chariot-wheel, applaud his power.
That ills corrosive, cares importunate,
Are not immortal too, O Death! is thine.
Our day of dissolution!--name it right;
'Tis our great pay-day; 'tis our harvest, rich
And ripe. What, though the sickle, sometimes keen,
Just scars us as we reap the golden grain?
More than thy balm, O Gilead, heals the wound.
Birth's feeble cry, and Death's deep dismal groan,
Are slender tributes low-tax'd Nature pays
For mighty gain: the gain of each, a life!
But O, the last the former so transcends,
Life dies, compared; Life lives beyond the grave.
(ll. 487-510, p. 85)",,20431,"","""Then welcome, Death, thy dreaded harbingers, / Age and Disease: Disease, though long my guest,-- / That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life; / Which, pluck'd a little more, will toll the bell / That calls my few friends to my funeral.""","",2013-06-06 14:22:05 UTC,Night the Third