Take warning now by me, and shun bad company,
Lest you come to hell with me, for I must die,
Lest you come to hell with me, for I must die.
GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY.
[To the untiring exertions of Major D. B. Douglass, Messrs. Joseph A. Perry, Henry E. Pierrepont, Gerrit G. Van Wagenen, and a few other liberal minded gentlemen, the public are indebted for the design and completion of this beautiful place of repose for the dead. It is anticipated that ten miles of avenue will be completed during the coming summer, and when the whole is laid out, according to the proposed plan, that there will be fifteen miles of picturesque road within its precincts. Part of the battle of Long Island in the Revolution was fought upon its grounds, and it is intended at no distant day, to remove the remains of those that perished in the Prison Ships to the Cemetery, where they will sleep undisturbed beneath an appropriate monument. The views from Mount Washington, and other eminences, within its precincts, embrace the entire bay and harbour of New-York, with their islands and forts: the cities of New-York and Brooklyn; the shores of the North and East Rivers; New-Jersey, Staten Island, the Quarantine; unnumbered towns and villages sprinkled over the wide expanse of the surrounding country, and the margin of the broad Atlantic, from Sandy Hook, to a distance far beyond the Rockaway Pavilion. The fine old forest which covers the greater part of the grounds, shrouding and almost concealing from sight, several beautiful lakes and sheets of water suggested the name, with which it has been consecrated, the Green-Wood Cemetery.]
Where, then, is death!—and my own voice startled me from my reverie as, leaning on my saddle-bow on the summit of Mount Washington in the Greenwood Cemetery, I asked—Where, then, is death! The golden sun of a delicious summer’s afternoon was streaming o’er the undulating hills of Staten Island lighting more brilliantly the snow-white villas and emerald lawns:—the Lazaretto—its fleet gay with the flags of all the nations, was nestling like a fairy city at its feet:—the noble bay before me was one great polished mirror—motionless vessels with white sails and drooping pennants, resting on its surface, like souls upon the ocean of Eternity, and every thing around was bright and still and beautiful as I asked myself the question—Where, then, is death!
The islands with their military works lay calm and motionless upon the waters—the grim artillery, like sleeping tigers crouched upon the ramparts and the castle’s walls—but the glistening of the sentry’s polished musket, and the sudden clamorous roll of drums showed me, that—not there was death.
I turned.—The great fierce city extending as far as eye could reach—the sky fretted with her turrets and her spires—her thousand smokes rising and mingling with the o’erhanging-clouds;—as she rose above her bed of waters, with hoarse continuous roar, cried to me—“Look not here, not here—for death!” Her sister city, with her towers and cupolas—her grassy esplanades surmounted with verdant trees and far extending colonnades embowered in shrubbery,—from her high terraced walls, re-echoed the hollow roar—“Not here for death!”
The island lay extended far before me—its farms and towns—its modest spires—its granaries—its verdant meadows—its rich cultivated fields—its woods—its lawns—all wrapped in silence, but still its whisper softly reached me—“Not here—not here—is death!”—E’en the great distant ocean, closed only from my view by the far-reaching horizon, in sullen continuous murmurs moaned—“Not here is death!”