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| THE GRAVE is clad in beauty! Nature’s hand | |
| Profuse hath scattered of her gifts around; | |
| Here to the eye of day fair flowers expand, | |
| Perfume the glade, and gem the broken ground. | |
| Here forest trees arise, a varied band, | 5 |
| And waters still by willowy margins bound; | |
| Here weep the dews, and through the bosky dell | |
| The breezes come with greeting and farewell. | |
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| The grave is clad in beauty! Art hath given | |
| Her aid to those who mourn, and mid the shade | 10 |
| Gleams emblematic sculpture,—columns riven, | |
| Lamps shattered, rosebuds broken and decayed; | |
| Pale crosses pointing through the trees to heaven, | |
| And infant forms in graceful slumber laid; | |
| And massive doors against the green hill’s side, | 15 |
| Sealed till the angel’s voice those bonds divide. | |
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| The grave is clad in beauty! It is well; | |
| Why should we burden more the weary heart, | |
| Or add still deeper pangs to those that swell | |
| The weeping eyes, or causelessly impart | 20 |
| External gloom, where all should kindly tell | |
| Of better joys than such as thus depart; | |
| Of hope beyond the marble and the sod, | |
| And blessings for the dead who die in God? | |
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| Be reverent here, and think of Him whose tomb | 25 |
| Was in a garden laid; who bore away | |
| From death the sting, the terror, and the gloom | |
| That, mingled in his cup of trembling, lay; | |
| Who sanctified our universal doom, | |
| And gladness gave to it for chill dismay, | 30 |
| And beautified the place of man’s repose, | |
| When from its gloom a conqueror he rose. | |
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