Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-07-28
Thanatopsis.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, A. D. 1912.

To him, who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
various language; for his gayer hours
She has voice of gadness, and smile,
Aud eloquence of beauty; and she glides
| Into his darker musings with a mild
And gentle sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.
When thoughts
OF 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
10 Natures teaching, while, from all around
Comes still voice:
Yet a 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, surrenderng up
Thine individual being, thou shalt go
10 mix forever with the elements
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The
oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy
mold.
Yet MOTTO thy eternal resting place,
Shalt thou retire alone-nor could'st thou
wish
Couch more extravagant Thou shalt lie
down
With patrlarclls 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 a handful, to the tribes
That slumber in its BOSOM Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce
Or lose sthyself 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 hghL OF years began have laid them down
In 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 departure? All that breathe
Win 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. zphantom; yet, all these shall
Their mirth, and their enjoyments, and shall
And make their bed with thee.
As the long train
OF ages glide away. the sons of men,
The youth, in llfe's green spring, and he who
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
10 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
Byan nnaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams!