And ere one voice can mourn, On upward pinions borne, Then, whether with fire they burn This dwelling-house of mine when I am fled, They are hidden, they are hidden, in some thin air, And in a marble urn Far from corruption, far from care, Where through a veil they view their former scene, Only a little touched by what has been. Touched but a little; and yet, Conscious of every change that doth befall, The creatures of this tiny whirling ball, Dowered with a clearer seeing, To wider joys and nobler strife, Viewing our little human hopes and fears As we our children's fleeting smiles and tears. My ashes rest by my beloved dead, Or in the sweet cold earth I pass from death to birth, And pay kind Nature's life-long debt In charnel-yard or hidden ocean wave, LEWIS MORRIS. Songs of Two Worlds: Third Series. (Kegan Paul and Co.) [It is good news to the lovers of poetry that Mr. Lewis Morris's Poetical Works are now published in a cheap uniform edition.] II. FUNERAL PICTURES, AND MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS ABOUT DEATH AND THE DEAD. "Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets."-ECCLES. xii. 5. THE BURIAL OF THE DANE. DIRGE. [For one who fell in Battle.] ROOM for a Soldier! lay him in the clover; He loved the fields, and they shall be his cover; Make his mound with hers who called him once her lover : Where the rain may rain upon it, Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches; Make his mound with sunshine on it, Where the bee will dine upon it, Where the lamb hath lain upon it, Busy as the busy bee, his rest should be the clover; Gentle as the lamb was he, and the fern should be his cover; Fern and rosemary shall grow my soldier's pillow over : Where the rain may rain upon it, Sunshine in his heart, the rain would come full often, Out of those tender eyes which evermore did soften ; He never could look cold till we saw him in his coffin. Make his mound with sunshine on it, "Captain or Colonel,"-whatever invocation Long as the sun doth shine upon it, BLUE gulf all around us, Blue sky overheadMuster all on the quarter, We must bury the dead! Rugged of front and form; His name and the strand he hail'd from We know and there's nothing more! But perhaps his mother is waiting In the lonely Island of Fohr. Still as he lay there dying, Reason drifting, a wreck,— ""Tis my watch!" he would mutterI must go upon deck!" Ay, on deck-by the foremast! But watch and look-out are done; The Union Jack laid o'er him, How quiet he lies in the sun! Slow the ponderous engine! Stay the hurrying shaft! Let the roll of the ocean Cradle our giant craft! Gather around the grating, Carry your messmate aft! To the holiest page of prayer; A hundred locks of hair. Our captain reads the service (A little spray on his cheeks)— The grand old words of burial, And the trust a true heart seeks,— "We therefore commit his body To the deep!"-and, as he speaks, Launched from the weather-railing, Swift as the eye can mark, The ghastly, shotted hammock Plunges, away from the shark, Down, a thousand fathoms, Down into the dark! A thousand summers and winters The stormy Gulf shall roll High o'er his canvas coffin, But, silence to doubt and dole! There's a quiet harbour somewhere For the poor a-weary soul. Free the fetter'd engine! Speed the tireless shaft ! Loose top-gallant and topsail ! The breeze is fair abaft. Blue sea all around us, Blue sky bright o'erhead, Every man to his duty! We have buried our dead. H. H. BROWNELL. You bumpkin who stare at your brother conveyed, Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid, And be joyful to think when by death you're laid low, You've a chance to the grave like a gemman to go. "Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!" But a truce to this strain for my soul it is sad, T. NOEL Rhymes and Roundelays. THE PAUPER'S DRIVE. THERE'S a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot; To the churchyard a pauper is going, I wot; The road it is rough and the hearse has no springs, And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings:"Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!" Oh, where are the mourners? Alas! there are none, He has left not a gap in the world now he's gone, Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or manTo the grave with his carcase as fast as you can. "Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns !" What a jolting, and creaking, and splashing, and din; The whip how it cracks, and the wheels how they spin! How the dirt right and left o'er the hedges is hurled ! The pauper at length makes a noise in the world. "Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns !" Poor pauper, defunct, he has made some approach To gentility, now that he's stretched in a coach, He's taking a drive in his carriage at last, But it will not be long if he goes on so fast. "Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!" BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK. ON sunny slope and beechen swell, Far upward in the mellow light Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, In the warm blush of evening shone; By which the Indian's soul awakes. But soon a funeral hymn was heard They sang, that by his native bowers A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin Before, a dark-haired virgin train Stripped of his proud and martial dress, He came; and oft that eye so proud They buried the dark chief-they freed H. W. LONGfellow. Earlier Poems: Poetical Works. (Routledge.) THE DEAD. UNDERNEATH the nodding plumes, Curiously eyed; While anon the mourners follow Sweeping each safe breast, Calm boy-faces, earthward prest-- Underneath the pitiless roar Of the hungry deep, Crossed the gulf from life to-life, Hundreds in a moment knowing The one secret none is showing, Life, this hard and painful Life, With a yearning tongue Author of "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." Thirty Years. (Macmillan.) www THE LEAF. We all do fade as a leaf.-ISAIAH lxiv. 6. SEE the leaves around us falling, Dry and wither'd to the ground; Thus to thoughtless mortals calling, In a sad and solemn sound. Sons of Adam, once in Eden, Blighted when like us he fell, Hear the lecture we are reading, 'Tis, alas! the truth we tell. Virgins, much, too much presuming On your boasted white and red, View us, late in beauty blooming, Number'd now among the dead. Griping misers, nightly waking, See the end of all your care; Fled on wings of our own making, We have left our owners bare. Sons of honour, fed on praises, Flutt'ring high in fancied worth, Lo! the fickle air, that raises, Brings us down to parent earth. Learned sophs, in systems jaded, Who for new ones daily call, Cease, at length, by us persuaded, Ev'ry leaf must have its fall. |