The Digging Skeleton

I     In the anatomical plates     displayed on the dusty quays     where many a dry book sleeps     mummified, as in ancient days,     drawings to which the gravity     and skill of some past artist,     despite the gloomy subject     have communicated beauty,     youll see, and it renders those     gruesome mysteries more complete,     flayed men, and skeletons posed,     farm-hands, digging the soil at their feet. II     Peasants, dour and resigned,     convicts pressed from the grave,     whats the strange harvest, say,     for which you hack the ground,     bending your backbones there,     flexing each fleshless sinew,     what farmers barn must you     labour to fill with such care?     Do you seek to show by that pure,     and terrible, emblem of too hard     a fate! that even in the bone-yard     the promised sleeps far from sure:     that even the Voids a traitor:     that even Death tells us lies,     that in some land new to our eyes,     we must, perhaps, alas, forever,     and ever, and ever, eternally,     wield there the heavy spade,     scrape the dull earth, its blade     beneath our naked, bleeding feet?