# Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands 1842/Pere la Chaise

PERE LA CHAISE.
I stood amid the dwellings of the dead,
And saw the gayest city of the earth
Spread out beneath me. Cloud and sunlight lay
Upon her palaces and gilded domes,
In slumbrous beauty. Through the streets flowed on,
In ceaseless stream, gay equipage and throng,
As fashion led the way. Look up! Look up!
Mont Louis hath a beacon. Wheresoe'er
Ye seem to tend, so lightly dancing on
In your enchanted maze, a secret spell
Is on your footsteps, and unseen they haste
Where ye would not, and whence ye ne'er return.
Blind pilgrims are we all! We close our eyes
On the swift torrent that o'erwhelms our race,
And in our spanlike path the goal forget,
Until the shadows lengthen, and we sink
To rise no more.
 Methinks the monster Death
Wears not such visage here, so grim and gaunt
With terror, as he shows in other lands.
Robing himself in sentiment, he wraps
His dreary trophies in a maze of flowers,
And makes his tombs like temples, or a home
So sweet to love, that grief doth fleet away.
—I saw a mother mourning. The fair tomb
Was like a little chapel, hung with wreath,
And crucifix. And there she spread the toys
That her lost babe had loved, as if she found
A solace in the memory of its sports.
Tears flowed like pearl-drops, yet without the pang
That wrings and rends the heart-strings. It would seem
A tender sorrow, scarce of anguish born,
So much the influence of surrounding charms
Did mitigate it.
 Mid the various groups
That visited the dead, I marked the form
Of a young female winding through the shades.
Just at that point she seemed, where childhood melts
But half away, like snows that feel the sun,
Yet shrinking closer to their shaded nook,
Delay to swell the sparkling stream of youth.
She had put off her sabots at the gate,
Heavy with clay, and to a new-made grave
Hasted alone. Upon its wooden cross
She placed her chaplet, and with whispering lips,
Perchance in prayer, perchance in converse low
With the loved slumberer, knelt, and strewed the seeds
Of flowers among the mould. A shining mass
Of raven tresses 'scaped amid the toil
From their accustomed boundary; but her eyes,
None saw them, for she heeded not the tread
Of passers-by. Her business was with those
Who slept below. 'T would seem a quiet grief,
And yet absorbing; such as a young heart
Might for a sister feel, ere it had learned
A deeper love.
 Come to yon stately dome,
With arch and turret, every shapely stone.
Breathing the legends of the Paraclete,
Where slumber Abelard and Heloise, 'Neath such a world of wreaths, that scarce ye see
Their marble forms recumbent, side by side.
On! On!—this populous spot hath many a fane, To win the stranger's admiration. See
La Fontaine's fox-crowned cenotaph; and his
Whose "Mécanique Celeste" hath writ his name
Among the stars; and hers who, soaring high
In silken globe, found a strange death by fire
Amid the clouds.
 The dead of distant lands
Are gathered here. In pomp of sculpture sleeps
The Russian Demidoff, and Britain's sons
Have crossed the foaming sea, to leave their dust
In a strange soil. Yea, from my own far land
They've wandered here, to die. Were there not graves
Enough among our forests? by the marge
Of our broad streams? amid the hallowed mounds
Of early kindred? that ye needs must come
This weary way, to share the strangers' bed,
My people? I could weep to find ye here!
And yet your names are sweet, the words ye grave,
In the loved language of mine infancy,
Most pleasant to the eye, involved so long
Mid foreign idioms.
 Yonder height doth boast
The warrior-chiefs, who led their legions on
To sack and siege; whose flying tramp disturbed
The Cossack in his hut, the Alpine birds,
Who build above the cloud, and Egypt's slaves,
Crouching beneath their sky-crowned pyramids.
How silent are they all! No warning trump
Amid their host! No steed! No footstep stirs
Of those who rushed to battle! Haughtily
The aspiring marble tells each pausing group
Their vaunted fame. Oh, shades of mighty men!
Went these proud honors with you, where the spear
And shield resound no more? Cleaves the blood-stain
Around ye there? Steal the deep-echoing groans
Of those who fell, the cry of those who mourned,
Across the abyss that bars you from our sight,
Waking remorseful pangs?
 We may not ask
With hope of answer. But the time speeds on,
When all shall know  There is the lowly haunt,
Where rest the poor. No towering obelisk Beareth their name. No blazoned tablet tells
Their joys or sorrows. Yet 't is sweet to muse
Around their pillow of repose, and think
That Nature mourns their loss, though man forget.
The lime-tree and acacia, side by side,
Spring up, in haste to do their kindly deed
Of sheltering sympathy, as though they knew
Their time was short.
 Sweet Nature ne'er forgets
Her buried sons, but cheers their summer-couch
With turf and dew-drops, bidding autumn's hand
Drop lingering garlands of its latest leaves,
And glorious spring from wintry thraldom burst,
To bring their type of Immortality.
Monday, Nov. 23, 1840.
"Mont Louis hath a beacon."
That portion of Mont Louis which is appropriated to the most beautiful of the four cemeteries, in the neighborhood of Paris, was originally a part of the garden and pleasure-grounds of Pere la Chaise, the favorite confessor of Louis the Fourteenth, and Madame de Maintenon. It covers nearly 100 acres, and its mixture of funereal foliage and flowers, with the monuments of the dead, is picturesque and imposing. Yet it is less touching in its effect on the feelings, than ​the labyrinthine solitudes of Mount Auburn, or the sweet spot where the dead repose at Laurel Hill, on the green margin of the Schuylkill. Forty years have not elapsed since it was set apart for this service. The first corpse was laid there on the 21st of May, 1804; since which there have been more than 100,000 interments, and 16,000 monuments erected. These are in every diversified form, of column, urn, and altar, pyramid, obelisk, and sepulchral chapel; many of them surrounded by enclosures, within which are plants, and flowering shrubs, and seats for mourning friends, in their visits to the departed.
"Where slumber Abelard and Heloise."
This monument is of Gothic architecture, and constructed from the ruins of the abbey of the Paraclete. Its form is a parallelogram, fourteen feet by eleven, and twenty-four in height. A pinnacle twelve feet in elevation rises from the centre of the roof, and four smaller ones, finely sculptured, ornament the corners. It has fourteen columns six feet in height, with rich capitals, and the arches which they support are surmounted by cornices wrought with flowers. The four pediments are decorated with bas-reliefs, roses, and medallions. The statues of Heloise and Abelard are recumbent within, and literally heaped with garlands. Their bones repose in the vault beneath; those of Abelard having been removed from the priory of ​St. Marcel, where he died in 1142, and those of Heloise, who survived him about twenty years, from the Paraclete, of which she was abbess.
"And hers who, soaring high
In silken globe, found a strange death by fire
Among the clouds."
The tomb of the unfortunate Madame Blanchard is surmounted by a globe in flames. The inventor of gas-lights is also honored by a gilded flame issuing from an urn. The benevolent Abbe Sicard has his name recorded on his monument by beautifully sculptured marble hands, each stretched forth to form one of its letters according to the manual alphabet of the deaf and dumb, his indebted and affectionate pupils. On the tomb of Grétry, the musical composer, hangs a lyre, and on that of La Fontaine sits very composedly a black fox, while two bas-reliefs in bronze represent, one his fable of the wolf and stork, the other that of the wolf and lamb. Parmentier, to whom France owed in a great measure the general cultivation of the potato, has an elegant monument, and Denon, the traveller, a pedestal surmounted by his statue, in bronze. Deeply shaded by lime trees, is a tomb in the form of a cottage, where reposes Frederic Mestezart, the beloved pastor of a church in Geneva; and the Russian Countess Demidoff is interred beneath a ​superb temple of the richest white marble, supported by ten columns, having in the interior à recumbent statue on an altar-tomb, with her arms and cornet. From the tomb of La Place rises an obelisk, crowned with an urn, and ornamented by a star and palm branches encircling inscriptions and eulogies on his works. A splendid sepulchral chapel, surmounted by a temple, is erected to the memory of General Foy, whose statue is represented in the act of haranguing the people. The military taste of France is seen in the pomp and lavish expense, with which the sepulchres of her chiefs are adorned. Marshal Davoust has a pyramid of granite; Massena, one of white marble, 21 feet in height; Le Fevre, a magnificent sarcophagus, where two figures of Fame are crowning his bust, and a serpent, the emblem of immortality, encircling his sword; while Ney, the "bravest of the brave," sleeps unmarked, save by a single cypress.
"My people."
It was not without surprise that I found so many from my own dear land, in this receptacle of the dead. Five States, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Tennessee, have sent a delegation of their sons and daughters to the sepulchres of a foreign land. The names of each, though almost all personally unknown, touched the chords of tender sympathy, ​as if for a relative or friend. One of these, for many years a resident in Boston, though a native of Portugal, will awaken the affectionate recollection of some who knew and respected her.
Died
March 1st, 1832,
Frances Ann,
Countess, Colonna de Walewski,
Widow of the late General Humphreys
of the United States,
Minister in Spain and Portugal.
"As though they knew
Their time was short."
Trees and shrubs, of slight root and rapid growth, adorn that part of the cemetery which is appropriated to the common people. They are buried in temporary graves, the better class of which may be held for ten years, by a payment of fifty francs, after which term they are revertible to the cemetery, even though monuments should have been erected upon them. The other class, or the fosses communes, are where the poor are gratuitously buried in coffins laid side by side, without any intervening space. This spot is reopened and buried over again every five years; that period of time being allowed for the decomposition of ​the bodies. The wooden crosses, which designate the respective graves, have occasionally an inscription, touching from its simplicity. One commemorates
"Pauvre Marie!
 A 29 ans."
Among the temporary graves are occasionally cul- tured plants, little borders of box, and other fragile decorations, exemplifying the sweet and truthful sentiment of the bard of the "Country Church Yard."
"For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
 This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned;
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
 Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?"