Year: 1863




To hlmpwho in the love of nature holds


Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
various language: For his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smiis
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Intoh his darker musings with mid
And healing symPathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aHara. When thoughts
OF the last bitter hour come like Q. blight
0verthy 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, under the open sky, and list
To Natures teachings; while from all around
Earth and her waters and the depths of air
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, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements


To be 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 around and pierce thy mold


Yet to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone--nor shouldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
Win patrlarchs OF the INFANT WoIiu-Nltu hinSs,
The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary Of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock ribbed and ancient as the sun; the wales
Stretching in pensive quietncss between;
The venerable woods rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round


all,
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, and the Bactrian desert pierce,
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 hrst
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When t5ou are gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod or and each as before will chase
His fayorte phantom yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, 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 goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The bowed with age, the infant in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age cut off
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
BY those who, in their turn, shall follow thee.


So liye 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 sooth-
-ts ed


BY an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like who wraps the drapery Of his couch