Page images
PDF
EPUB

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,
By constant change beset,

The creatures of this tiny whirling ball,
Filled with a higher being,

Dowered with a clearer seeing,
Risen to a vaster scheme of life,

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 heart's-ease and in violet-

In charnel-yard or hidden ocean wave,
Where'er I lie, I shall not scorn my grave.

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.

[blocks in formation]

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,
Where the sun may shine upon it,
Where the lamb hath lain upon it,
And the bee will dine upon it.

Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches;
Take him to the fragrant fields, by the silver birches,
Where the whippoorwill shall mourn, where the
oriole perches:

Make his mound with sunshine on it,

Where the bee will dine upon it,

Where the lamb hath lain upon it,
And the rain will rain 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,
Where the sun may shine upon it,
Where the lamb hath lain upon it,
And the bee will dine 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,
Where the wind may sigh upon it,
Where the moon may stream upon it,
And Memory shall dream upon it.

"Captain or Colonel,"-whatever invocation
Suit our hymn the best, no matter for thy station,—
On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a
mighty nation!

Long as the sun doth shine upon it,
Shall glow the goodly pine upon it,
Long as the stars do gleam upon it,
Shall Memory come to dream upon it.
THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.

BLUE gulf all around us,

Blue sky overheadMuster all on the quarter,

We must bury the dead!
It is but a Danish sailor,

Rugged of front and form;
A common son of the forecastle,
Grizzled with sun and storm.

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!
Stand in order, and listen

To the holiest page of prayer;
Let every foot be quiet,
Every head be bare!
The soft trade-wind is lifting

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,
To think that a heart in humanity clad
Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end,
And depart from the light without leaving a friend.
Bear softly his bones over the stones,
Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker
yet owns.

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,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down
The glory that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its brazen leaves.

Far upward in the mellow light

Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white,
Around a far uplifted cone,

In the warm blush of evening shone;
An image of the silver lakes,

By which the Indian's soul awakes.

But soon a funeral hymn was heard
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, grey forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior's head;
But, as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds the weapons, made
For the hard toils of war, were laid;
The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death-dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

Stripped of his proud and martial dress,
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,

He came; and oft that eye so proud
Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief-they freed
Beside the grave his battle-steed;
And swift an arrow cleaved its way
To his stern heart! One piercing neigh
Arose,—and, on the dead man's plain,
The rider grasps his steed again.

H. W. LONGfellow. Earlier Poems: Poetical Works. (Routledge.)

THE DEAD.

UNDERNEATH the nodding plumes,
Black in dolorous pride,
All along the busy streets

Curiously eyed;

While anon the mourners follow
In feigned calmness, grief as hollow,
Some few idly glancing wide-
How quietly they ride!
Underneath the artillery's tramp
Charging, fiend-possest,
Storms of rattling fiery hail

Sweeping each safe breast,
Till the kind moon-battle over-
Kiss their faces like a lover,

Calm boy-faces, earthward prest--
How quietly they rest!

Underneath the pitiless roar

Of the hungry deep,

Crossed the gulf from life to-life,
In a single leap;

Hundreds in a moment knowing

The one secret none is showing,
Though the whole world rave and weep—
How quietly they sleep!

Life, this hard and painful Life,

With a yearning tongue
Calls unto her brother Death:
"Brother, dear, how long?"
Lays her head upon his shoulder—
Softer than all clasps, scarce colder !—
In his close arms, safe and strong,
Slips with him from the throng.

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.

« PreviousContinue »