Classic Poem

As, reverently, the gates are passed
That guard the " City of the Dead, "
A shade is o'er the spirit cast,
The voice is hushed, subdued the tread.

The love of wealth, the pride of life,
Ambition's aims, our love or hate,
The hopes and fears of earthly strife,
Our so-called fortune or our fate,

Are all forgotten as we tread
The portals of this silent realm;
The sad memorials of the dead
The living heart and hopes o'erwhelm.

We feel how vain is all the thought
We give to earth's too transient joys:
How dearly is that pleasure bought
Whose gain alone the mind employs.

For if we make this earth our all
And in its hope and promise trust,
Ah, surely will the structure fall,
As surely end in " dust to dust. "

But if an earnest care we take,
With all the aids that God has given
With ever bounteous hand, to make
This earth a stepping-stone to heaven;

If heart and hopes are fixed above,
Are centred on the higher life;
If wealth and place, if fame and love
Are made subservient to the strife

We wage for higher, holier joy,
Our doubts will cease — dissolve, our cares:
If godlike aims the soul employ,
This place for us no terror wears.

Our faith secure, we know no fear;
This thought alone full comfort gives —
The body only slumbers here,
The man himself forever lives.

Thus deep in thought I slowly trace my way,
Where, clustering thickly, lie the graves around:
While solemn feelings o'er my senses play
With careful feet I tread the hallowed ground.

The whirr of insects and the hum of bees:
The softened footfalls on the verdant sward;
The gentle rustling of the wind-swept trees;
The mourners' whispered accents that record

To willing ears the oft-told tale of love,
Of dear, departed friends, whose mouldering clay
Beneath them lies; but in the realms above
Whose souls, perhaps, may list to what they say:

These, only, break the silence of the place;
Yet hardly break: 'twere nearer truth to say,
By these the perfect stillness we can trace;
Its solemn depths, by contrast, they convey.

Ye flowers! that bloom in sweet profusion here,
The air is teeming with your perfumed breath;
Life's happy dwellings doth your presence cheer,
You beautify the sad abodes of death.

Ah! what a tale of mingled joy and woe,
To thoughtful minds, these lowly mounds convey:
The modest headstones tell who lie below;
But is this all the brief inscriptions say?

Alas! what broken hopes lie buried there;
What thwarted aims, what longings unfulfilled!
And yet, how many hearts released from care;
How many restless, weary spirits stilled!

They tell of partings; hearts of hearts bereft;
Of lives whose brightness died with those they mourn:
They also tell of earthly sorrows left
For glad awakening in an endless morn.

They tell of vacant seats in lonely homes,
Of voids in aching hearts that naught can fill;
They whisper to the heart that solace comes
Together with the mandate " Peace, be still! "
To him who stands beside the graves where rest
The mortal frames of those whose hearts in life
Were closely linked with his, there comes, perchance,
A feeling, indefinable and strange,
That fills his heart and spreads its genial warmth
Through all his being; 'neath its loving sway
He seems once more to hold communion sweet
With those dear spirits which, in years gone by,
Did animate the forms that slumber there.
So potent is the God-breathed spirit — Love!
Immortal in its essence, and divine,
By place and time and matter uncontrolled:
It links the present and the past, the seen
And unseen, the unknown and the known;
And draws together in a holy bond
Those who have passed beyond this narrow sphere
And those who still its joys and sorrows know.

The hours speed on; the sun is sinking fast,
His glory veiling in the western sky;
Thy beauty, Fairhill, for the day, is past,
The lengthening shadows on thy greensward lie.

With lingering feet the peaceful scene I leave,
My spirit chastened by its sojourn there:
A hallowing sense of Nearness I perceive;
A holy Presence hovers in the air.

I hear no voice, I see no form, but yet
A sacred impress on my heart is made;
For where the living and the dead are met
The grosser things of earth aside are laid.

The spirit needs must outward, upward reach;
Its inmost depths beneath that touch expand:
That Presence and this impress do but teach
That, dead or living, we are in His hand.

Assured of that one truth we live, resigned
To pay the debt that all who live must pay;
And with our hearts toward God and heaven inclined,
Await the dawning of eternal day!