Classic Poem

I SAW again the long line cross the green,
While on the wandering airs forlornly fell
The measured monody of one slow bell,
With dirges doled between.

Like Autumn, when he grieves in leafless trees,
The solemn organ gave
Low elegies that wailed in minor keys,
And floated through the gloomy nave,
Like ghostly voices talking of the grave.

With sorrow in their thoughtful faces,
The village children from their places,
In kirtles clean came up in sober bands,
With sprigs and posies in their hands;
“Strew flowers,” they said,
“Upon the dead,
With cypress from the lonely heather,
Wet with our tears;
Come join their loveliness to hers,
To make the darkness of the sepulchre,
Seem pleasant unto her!”

And wandering through each arch and aisle,
The saddened music all the while—
What time the service for the dead,
And solemn rituals were said,
Seemed to grieve itself away,
As a sad, uneasy breeze,
That all the rough Atlantic day
Has wandered up and down and blown and blown
And tired itself upon the lonely seas,
Dies into silence when the sun goes down.

Unnoticed in the corner where I stood,
And musing on the mournful obsequies,
“Alas! alas!” I said, “is this the end?
And must such melancholy scenes as these,
That rob us of the beautiful and good,
Forever on the ways of life attend?
Ay me! there is no loveliness,” I thought,
“But what to some untimely end is brought;
Clouds hide the sun; sin bolts the gates of Heaven;
And soon or late the happiest heart is riven!
Even Nature only decks herself with flowers,
To show more ghastly in autumnal hours;
In vain to heaven our claspéd hands we lift;
Driven by adverse winds we drift and drift
From ports of peace, like wretches lost at sea;
Hope thins away into a hollow wraith,
We fast, we pray, we wither and we die,
And nothing is immutable but death!”

But in my heart I seemed to hear
My angel whisper, fine and clear,
The good, the beautiful, can never die!
One touch of Faith shall rend the tomb asunder,
As rocks are riven by the bolts of thunder.
Her's is the pass-word of the sky;
Triumphant over Death she soars,
And at her touch the starry doors
Of Peace wide open fly!”

And then the choir began to sing,
“O Grave where is thy victory—thy victory?
O Death where is thy sting?”
And again the children said
“Come, come,
Sprinkle flowers upon the dead,
Heaven hath called an angel home!”

And blending in with rhythmic adorations,
And mellow thunder's ponderous palpitations,
Again the swelling organs blew!
In long reverberating undulations
The deep base rumbled, surged in seas of sound,
From stop to stop the phonic fury flew,
The treble trumpets trembled, and anew
Storms of triumphant music swept around!

And then a mellow flush of sunset bloom,
That bridged with beams of light the sacred gloom,
Through the deep enstainéd windows came.
Soft, warm and like a stream of golden mist,
That made the gothic gildings seem aflame,
And flushed with splendors an emblazoned Christ.