The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-10-22
The Home Circle.
THANATOPsIs.

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language for his gaver hours
And eloquence of beauty and she gldes
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
OF the last bitter hour come like a 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 =
Goforth, under the open sky, and list
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air
Comes a 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 80 earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish olod, which the rude swain
Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alOne-nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world-with kings,
The powerful of the eHrth the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hOary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulohre. 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
Old oceans gray and melancholy waste
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite 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, traverse Barca's desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings-yet the dead are there
And millions in those solitudes since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last seep,-the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest,-Rnd what if thou withdraw
In silence from the iving-and no friend
Take note of thy departure? 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 favUrite phantom yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed vita thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life 8 green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matrOn and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray headed man.
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, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber III the silent halls of death,
Thou so not like the quarry slave at night,
ScOurged 80 his dungeon, but sustained and sOOthed
By an unfalteripg trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps she drapPry of his couch
About him, and lies down 81 pleasant dreams.
William Cullen Bra