Many years earlier, probably in 1816, Richard had set out his thoughts on Death, that terrifying ever-present visitor in Victorian society:

Death! Oh tremendous sound!
It fills my soul with terror while I muse
On what awaits me at the final hour.
What pen can write? What tongue can fully tell?
What heart conceive the scene that brings about
The awful separation? Oh, my soul!
Thou must then quit this tenement of clay –
This hand, this eye, which now subservient yield
Their ready aid to execute thy will,
The lungs respire not – all the crimson valves
Close up the important avenues that lead
The rippling current to its outmost bound!
Oh, what sensations must that hour produce,
When every hinge is broken, every bold
And every spring that guides the grand machine
Is snapped!
Then I must bid a long, last adieu
To all vain mortal man calls good or great!
Ah, what avails the sympathizing tear
Of wailing friends – or what an honoured name?
Alas! No sounding titles, wealth, or fame,
Nor sweet affection’s tear at all beguile
The cruel, staunch, inexorable foe.
Well, since the fiat issues from a throne
Whence evil never comes, I’ll bow submissive
And say, “Remember me, O Lord of Hosts!
Vouchsafe Thy loving kindness when I shoot
The awful gulf; when earthy joys forsake,
When heart and flesh shall fail, and strength decline,
Be Thou my only portion, gracious Spirit!
O’er Calvary’s mount, oh, let the friendly ray
Break radiant on my helpless soul, and cheer
Her dubious passage through the gloomy vale.”

For a quarter of a century Death had been visiting elsewhere; in the ‘40s and ‘50s it returned to the midst of Richard’s family, and drew nearer to himself and Mary. On April 9^th, 1853, he wrote her a poem, as on every tenth anniversary of their wedding. Its concluding lines were: