Classic Poem

They have left the camp, with its tents outspreading,
Like a garden of lilies, on Edom's plain;
They are climbing the mountain, in silence treading
A path which one shall not tread again.
Two aged brothers the way are leading,
There follows a youth in the solemn train.

O'er a sister's bier they have just been bending;
The desert prophetess sleeps hard by:
With her toilsome sojourn nearly ending,
With Jud h's mountains before her eye,
The echoes of Kadesh and Canaan blending,
She has calmly turned her aside to die!

They come, not to gaze on the matchless glory,
On grandeur the like of which earth has not;
A billowy ocean of mountains hoary,
A chaos of cliffs round this awful spot;
A vision like that in some old-world story,
Too terrible ever to be forgot.

The desert-rainbow that gleams before ye,
But leaves your solitude doubly bleak;
The shadows of sunset fall ghastly o'er ye;
Cliff frowns upon cliff, and peak on peak.
O rocks of the desolate, lean and hoary,
What lip of man can your grandeur speak!

Splinter'd and blasted and thunder-smitten,
Not a smile above, nor a hope below;
Shiver'd and scorch'd and hunger-bitten,
No earthly lightning has seam'd your brow;
On each stone the Avenger's pen has written,
Horror and ruin, and death and woe.

The king and the priest move on unspeaking,
The desert-priest and the desert-king;
'Tis a grave, a mountain-grave they are seeking,
Fit end of a great life-wandering!
And here, till the day of the glory-streaking,
This desert-eagle must fold his wing.

The fetters of age have but lightly bound him,
This bold sharp steep he can bravely breast;
With his six-score wondrous years around him,
He climbs like youth to the mountain's crest.
The mortal moment at last has found him,
Willing to tarry, yet glad to rest.

Is that a tear-drop his dim eye leaving,
As he looks his last on yon desert-sun?
Is that a sigh his faint bosom heaving,
As he lays his ephod in silence down?
'Twas a passing mist, to his sky still cleaving; —
But the sky has brightened, — the cloud is gone!

In his shroud of rock they have gently wound him,
'Tis a Bethel-pillow that love has given;
I see no gloom of the grave around him,
The death-bed fetters have all been riven;
'Tis the angel of life, not of death, that has found him,
And this is to him the gate of heaven.

He has seen the tombs of old Mizraim's wonder,
Where the haughty Pharaohs embalm'd recline;
But no pyramid-tomb, with its costly grandeur,
Can once be compared with this mountain-shrine;
No monarch of Memphis is swathed in splendour,
High Priest of the desert, like this of thine!

Not with thy nation thy bones are lying,
Nor Israel's hills shall thy burial see;
Yet with Edom's vultures around thee flying,
Safe and unrifled thy dust shall be; —
Oh who would not covet so calm a dying,
And who would not rest by the side of thee?

Not with thy fathers thy slumber tasting;
From sister and brother thou seem'st to flee.
Not in Shechem's plain are thy ashes wasting,
Not in Machpelah thy grave shall be;
In the land of the stranger thy dust is resting, —
Yet who would not sleep by the side of thee?

Alone and safe, in the happy keeping
Of rocks and sands, till the glorious morn,
They have laid thee down for thy lonely sleeping,
Waysore and weary and labour-worn;
While faintly the sound of a nation's weeping
From the vale beneath thee is upward borne.

As one familiar with gentle sorrow,
With a dirge-like wailing the wind goes by;
And echo lovingly seems to borrow
The plaintive note of the mourner's cry,
Which comes to-day and is gone to-morrow,
Leaving nought for thee but the stranger's sigh.

Alone and safe, in the holy keeping,
Of Him who holdeth the grave's cold key,
They have laid thee down for the blessed sleeping,
The quiet rest which his dear ones see; —
And why o'er thee should we weep the weeping,
For who would not rest by the side of thee?

Three Hebrew cradles, the Nile-palms under,
Rocked three sweet babes upon Egypt's plain;
Three desert-graves must these dear ones sunder;
Three sorrowful links of a broken chain;
Kadesh and Hor, and Nebo yonder, —
Three way-marks now for the pilgrim-train.

Are these my way-marks, these tombs of ages?
Are these my guides to the land of rest?
Are these grim rock-tombs the stony pages,
Which shew how to follow the holy blest?
And bid me rise, 'bove each storm that rages,
Like a weary dove to its olive nest?

Is death my way to the home undying?
Is the desert my path to the Eden-plain?
Are these lone links, that are round me lying,
To be gathered, and all re-knit again?
And is there beyond this land of sighing
A refuge for ever from death and pain?

On this rugged cliff, while the sun is dying
Behind yon majestic mountain-wall,
I stand; — not a cloudlet above me flying, —
Not a foot is stirring, no voices call; —
A traveller lonely, a stranger, trying
To muse o'er this wondrous funeral.

In silence we stand, till the faint stars cover
This grave of ages. Yes, thus would we
Still look and linger, and gaze and hover
About this cave where thy dust may be!
Great Priest of the desert, thy toil is over,
And who would not rest by the side of thee?

And night, the wan night is bending over
The twilight couch of the dying day,
With dewy eyes, like a weeping lover,
That doats on the beauty that will not stay,
And sighs that the mould so soon must cover
Each golden smile of the well-loved clay.

The night of ages bends softly o'er us;
Four thousand autumns have well nigh fled,
Love watches still the old tomb before us
Of sainted dust, in its mountain-bed;
Till the longed-for trump shall awake the chorus,
From desert and field, of the blessed dead.