WITH chastened spirit wandering mid the graves, | |
| I passed an hour afar from worldly sound, | |
| Where earthly care no longer Toil enslaves, | |
| Where silence only, and Death’s types, abound. | |
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| The soothing stillness of the summer air, | 5 |
| The waving trees that shadowed sculptured stone, | |
| The unknown names of those who mouldered there, | |
| Subdued my soul like music’s solemn tone. | |
| |
| I marked the token that Affection rears | |
| Above the buried dust so loved in life; | 10 |
| Where fragrant flowers, nursed by Sorrow’s tears, | |
| Adorn the sod where rests a child or wife; | |
| |
| And paused a moment by a lonely spot, | |
| The unrecorded mound wherein may sleep | |
| Some nameless waif, whose unremembered lot | 15 |
| Found naught to hope and left no friend to weep. | |
| |
| How many minds unconquered by their fate, | |
| How many brains that throbbed with feverish thought, | |
| How many wordless yearnings for the great, | |
| Have found beyond this bourn the goal they sought! | 20 |
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| What garnered wisdom, what unwritten lore, | |
| What glowing visions, and what noble worth, | |
| Have shone unvalued, then dropped back once more | |
| Like unset jewels into mines of earth! | |
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| Here stately monuments of graceful art | 25 |
| Proclaim the virtues of the flattered dead: | |
| How oft an epitaph exalts a heart | |
| Whose deeds no lustre on its lifetime shed! | |
| |
| Yet here, apart, mid calm, sequestered glade, | |
| A pathway winds, by pilgrim homage worn, | 30 |
| Where generous Love and Friendship’s tasteful aid | |
| Have shrined the relics whose repose they mourn. | |
| |
| Rough from the quarry hewn, in shapeless grace | |
| The unpolished block of virgin marble stands, | |
| And forms the massive but unmodelled base | 35 |
| Where chiselled urn admiring praise commands. | |
| |
| Expressive symbol of the mind unwrought, | |
| Till Time to Labor’s work perfection brings, | |
| And kindred souls, fulfilling Nature’s thought, | |
| Undying laurels carve where ivy clings. | 40 |
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| ’T was minstrel’s truest type, that needs no words, | |
| The stringless lyre leaning on thy grave! | |
| Death early loosed thy spirit’s “silver chords,” | |
| And stilled the music that thy being gave. | |
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| Yet Hope’s proud dreams might ask no more of Fame | 45 |
| Than such a tribute for an honored tomb, | |
| Where tears of grief bedew the cherished name, | |
| And glory spreads her bays of fadeless bloom! | |
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