Much more than that in which lies the tomb of Shelley is the situation of some of these Celestial graves fitted to make one “in love with death,” and there is much consoling in the thought which the Chinaman can entertain, that when the cold hand has stilled the beatings of the troubled heart, his disembodied spirit does not want a home, his name and memory are perpetuated in the ancestral hall, his wants are provided for, and the daughter whom he left a child feels that he is near her even to her old age. How different these convictions from the melancholy complaint of Abd-el-Rohaman, the Arab poet, as, fancying himself in the grave, forsaken and forgotten by all his kin, he wrote:—
“They threw upon me mould of the tomb and went their way,—
A guest, ’twould seem, had flitted from the dwellings of the tribe.
My gold and my treasures, each his share, they bore away,
Without thanks, without praise, with a jest and with a jibe.
“My gold and my treasures, each his share, they bore away;
On me they left the weight, with me they left the sin.
That night within the grave, without hoard or child, I lay:
No spouse, no friend was there, no comrade and no kin.
“The wife of my youth soon another husband found;