And he waxed confident, the human cry
Is wafted somewhere to a higher sphere,
Where it is answered with a perfect peace,—
That not a soul from earth does find release,
Release from darkness and the night of fear,
Without a morn of better hope on high.
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.
VII
Of all the seasons of the year there’s none
To melancholy people, like the fall,
That is, to persons of poetic mind,
For in this season they a beauty find
In earth and sky, which is transcending all
The wondrous glory of the summer gone.
For all its mellow beauty has a sadness,
Twixt tears and smiles, a sadness seen and heard
In nature’s varied aspects and its notes,
Upon the air’s dim haziness it floats:
The shrill cry of the migratory bird,
And tunes of vintage-reapers in their gladness.