VI
The grave has, after all, the truest peace;
The graveyard is the greatest moralist;
And it was wisdom that in days of eld,
The living with the dead communion held,
For they did worship in their very midst,
A custom which in our good times must cease.
No longer can we lay our dead within
The shadow of the church, but far away,
In some secluded spot where seldom seen
Is their last resting-place, beneath the green,
Where some good farmer makes his loads of hay,
And murmurs that it is in places thin.
We do not, in this shallow age, endure
To think of death, such thoughts do not amuse,
But mock the things which we are striving after;
It tickles not our vein of silly laughter,
The subject is unpleasant and obtruse,
Of which the preachers even are not sure.
The graveyard, ne’ertheless, is preaching more
To thinking minds than many homilies,—
It tells in no uncertain language of
The vanity in all which here we love,—
That all our restless seeking after bliss
Is but the drifting to another shore.
That men and empires have their little day,
Then turn to dust, as others have before,
That death is still the monarch of the world,
Before whose feet all things at last are hurled,
Before whose realm there is no closing door,
And has for all but one sad, darksome way.