River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1878-08-01
Thanat0psis.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, A. D. 1872.

1
| To him, who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various Lar guage; for his gayer hours
She has voice of gladness, and smile,
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with mild
And gentle sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.
When thoughts
or the last bitter hour come like blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
OF the stern agony, and shroud, and pail,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow
house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth into the open sky; and list
To Natures teaching, while, from all around
Comes a still voice:
Yet few days, and thee
The all beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many
tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall
claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, thou shalt go
To mix forever with the elements
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod which the rude
swain
Turns with his share, and treadS upon. The
oak
Shall send his roots abroad. and pierce thy
mold.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place,
Shalt thou retire alone--nor could'st thou
wish
Couch more extravagant. Thou shalt lie
down
With patriarchs of the infant world, with
kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past
All in one mighty sepulchre.
The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the wales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadow green; and poured
around all.
Old oceans gray and melancholy waste,
Are but the spoken decorations all
OF the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infte host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages
All that tread
The globe, are but handful, to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom Take the wings
OF morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or, lose kthyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save its own dashings-yet the dead are there
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The fight of years began. have laid them down
Ii their last sleep; the dead reign there alone
So shalt thou rest; and what If thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departurcg All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone; the solemn brood OF
care
Plod on; and each one as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet, all these shall
leave
Their mirth, and their enjoyments, and shall
come
And make their bed with thee.
As the long train
OF ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth, in life's green spring, and he who
s goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid
The bowed with age the infant, in the smiles
And beauty of innocent age cut Off
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those who, in their turn, shall follow them
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall
take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go, not like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and
soothed
By al nnaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams