last pulsation with the air of earth.  No.  Sealed as the marble figures by which they bear me.  Is this my Tomb.  Is this the narrow house appointed for the living?  Is this the Abbot’s palace after death?  Nay, I pray thee, brethren, close me not up in yon receptacle.  Where the cold air might shiver on my flesh I may be happy.  Yon tomb is dark and dismal, shut from the eye of day.  Louder and louder grows your chant, I know its terminating cadence.  It falls upon mine ear.  Take off this stony lid.  Nay, I will knock, knock, knock.  My arms are still unraised.  They hear me not.  Brethren! men! christians! no, monks, monks, monks, cold as the stone ye place upon my breast!  Have ye no ears? no hearts?  Do I not shout?  Do I not pray?  Ah! my tongue is one of marble.  It is cold and fixed.  They will not hear me.  Listen! their parting and receding steps.  Nay, hasten not away.  Silence.  No.  One step is lingering behind.  Thank God!  I shout.  Brother! what, ho!  He hears.  Brother!  He pauses.  What ho!  He goes.  Brother!  Silence is around, 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 between the crevices which time has uncemented.  They make remarks.  Is then a tomb a monument of wonder?  They talk of monks as things that are no more.  Then is the world no more.  At last the time is