Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

What beauteous visions filled this spot,

What dreams of pleasure long forgot?

Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear,

Have left one trace of record here.

Beneath this moldering canopy

Once shone the bright and busy eye;

But start not at the dismal void;

If social love that eye employed,

If with no lawless fire it gleamed,

But through the dews of kindness beamed,—