When spirits pure in body glorified
With Christ in heavenly mansions shall abide,
While wicked souls shall hear the Judge’s doom—
“Go ye accursed into endless gloom,”
Look on that stone and this, and ponder well:
Then choose ’twixt life and death, ’twixt
Heaven and Hell.
Poor Johnson! His last whim has been gratified: his “breathless clay” reposes beneath the “sylvan shade” that in life he so much delighted in. The thrush and the blackbird sing their orisons and vespers there; the fresh and fragrant breeze sweeps by; and the nodding trees that rustle overhead cast a verdant gloom around, that is brightened only where the warm sunlight steals through the intricacy of leaves and dapples the sward with touches of golden light. May no rude or irreverent hand disturb his resting-place, or “old lame gossip” share his sepulchre.