Siamese Twins

Know you how died those twins, famed far and near,

Who, tethered hip to hip, with Fate's strong thread,

Were forced to walk through life with equal tread,

And to be friends and share at last one bier?

How one awoke one day, and could not hear

His brother's breath, and felt, and found him dead;

And how, compelled to share a dead man's bed,

He died of an unutterable fear?

Body and Mind have link of like dread kind:

Woe to the Body, blind and helpless clod,

That wakes one day, and hears the Mind no more;

But ten times woe to the surviving Mind,

Born to create, command, and play the god:

Bound to a corpse, it struggles still to soar.