| |
| OH, where are they whose all that earth could give | |
| Beneath these senseless marbles disappeared? | |
| Where even they who taught these stones to grieve,— | |
| The hands that hewed them, and the hearts that reared? | |
| Such the poor bounds of all that ’s hoped or feared | 5 |
| Within the griefs and smiles of this short day. | |
| Here sank the honored, vanished the endeared. | |
| This the last tribute love to love could pay,— | |
| An idle pageant-pile to graces passed away. | |
| |
| Why deck these sculptured trophies of the tomb? | 10 |
| Why, victims, garland thus the spoiler’s fane? | |
| Hope ye by these to avert oblivion’s doom, | |
| In grief ambitious, and in ashes vain? | |
| Go, rather bid the sand the trace retain | |
| Of all that parted Virtue felt and did! | 15 |
| Yet powerless man revolts from Ruin’s reign; | |
| And Pride has gleamed upon the coffin-lid, | |
| And heaped o’er human dust the mountain pyramid. | |
| |
| Sink, mean memorials of what cannot die! | |
| Be lowly as the relics you o’erspread! | 20 |
| Nor lift your funeral forms so gorgeously, | |
| To tell who slumbers in each lowly bed. | |
| I would not honor thus the sainted dead, | |
| Nor to each stranger’s careless eye declare | |
| My sacred griefs for joy and friendship fled. | 25 |
| No, let me hide the names of those that were, | |
| Deep in my stricken heart, and shrine them only there. | |
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