midnight
You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave , and can not persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb . That gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour . In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon , though the lights , the music and revelry , above may cause us to forget their existence and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide . But sometimes , and oftenest at midnight , those dark receptacles are flung wide open . In an hour like this , when the mind has a passive sensibility , but no active strength -- when the imagination is a mirror imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of selecting or controlling them -- then pray that your griefs may slumber and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain . It is too late . A funeral train comes gliding by your bed in which passion and feeling assume bodily shape and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye .