“Death,—­if thou art but the portal,
    Leading to glories immortal,
    Why should we tremble to near thee,
    How be the cowards to fear thee,

    “Since the worlds blazing above us,
    Peopled by angels who love us,
    Stand our fatherly mansions,
    Fitted for spirits’ expansions?

    “Where are the dead? and what doing? 
    Still their old trifles pursuing? 
    Or in the trance of a slumber,
    Crowded by dreams without number?—­

    “Dreams of unspeakable sadness,
    Breams of ineffable gladness,—­
    As the quick conscience remembers
    Evil and good in their embers,—­

    “As it lives over in quiet,
    Time and its orgies of riot,
    Or the good gifts and good graces,
    Bright’ning its happier phases,—­

    “As it sees photograph’d clearly,
    Crystalised sharply and nearly,
    Life and its million transactions,
    Fancies and feelings and factions,—­

    “Every prayer ever uttered,
    Every curse ever muttered,
    All the man’s lowest and highest,—­
    These are thyself, when thou diest!

    “Filling thee, after thy measure,
    From the full river of pleasure,
    Or, as the fruit of thy sowing,
    Pangs of remorse ever growing,—­

    “In thee all Heaven upspringing,
    Or its dread opposite flinging
    Blackness and darkness about thee,—­
    Both are within, not without thee!

    “Yet,—­in that darkness, we grope for
    Somewhat far off, yet to hope for,
    That through some future repentance,
    Justice may soften its sentence.

    “Ere from the dead He had risen,
    ’He preached to the spirits in prison,’—­
    Is this a text that His aid is
    Still to be hoped for in Hades?

    “‘Wrath may endure for a season,’
    Both in religion and reason,—­
    But if its end must be never,
    Where is His mercy for ever’?

    “Ay,—­after long retribution,
    Mercy may drag from pollution
    Souls that have suffered for ages,
    Working out sin’s bitter wages,—­

    “So that the end shall be glorious,
    Good over evil victorious,
    And this black sin-night of sorrow,
    Blaze into gladness to-morrow!”

And so I make an end of this autobiography, with the humble prayer that I may have grace given to finish my course in this life usefully and with honour, at peace with God and man; mindful of that caution of Tellus, the Athenian, as recorded by Herodotus, “not to judge any man happy until he is dead;”—­the Christian adds, “and is alive again!”

Let me conclude with some noble lines of Ovid in his Epilogue to the Metamorphoses, which I have Englished below:—­