AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul
and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures
of Tombs,--a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-
spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and
eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous
melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like
every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite
principles,--from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our
immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A
tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first
presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of
everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of
a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and
stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a
virtuous character.
"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue,
that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting.
From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that
have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of
love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence it is that
we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of
an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we
are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to
repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason
of her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no
need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, the
more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. They
produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather
than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with
the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the
country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very
lively manner. A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to
flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is that
grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;
it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with
all the effects of Nature,--with the dawning of the morning, with the
murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of
the night."
Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It
is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"--a tract of some forty
or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and
covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is
conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is
marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family
lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,
its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a
solitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits
the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the
great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted
foliage of the autumnal forest.
Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston
Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing
there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing
along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the
young, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle
years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,
hurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping
over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.
It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite
resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among
these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light
upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in
these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the
gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,
--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the
language of Wordsworth,--
"In youth we love the darkling lawn,
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then evening is preferred to dawn,
And autumn to the spring.
Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."
The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated
their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular
resort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through
which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and
beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through
the long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy
indifference of the indolent East. Most of the visitors whom I met at
the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along,
apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full,
perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the
stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded
mounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence
of the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silenced
and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me,
and involuntarily pays:
"The deep reverence taught of old,
The homage of man's heart to death."
Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind
me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves
and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened
to the same wild music of the woods for the last time. Then, too, comes
the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that
these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall
upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and
the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed
forever. It is hard for us to realize this. We are so accustomed to
look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems
strange that they should survive us. Tennyson, in his exquisite
metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this
sentiment:--
"Alas! though I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.
"Not less the bee will range her cells,
The furzy prickle fire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells."
"The pleasures of the tombs!" Undoubtedly, in the language of the
Idumean, seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad when
they can find the grave;" who long for it "as the servant earnestly
desireth the shadow." Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain,
to the long afflicted and the hopeless,--rest on the calm bosom of our
common mother. Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with
life's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary
eyes which "have seen evil, and not good," the everlasting shadow.
Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,--a curtain lifted only
on one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn
shadow. No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown
state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the
mysteries towards which we are all moving. "Man giveth up the ghost; and
where is he?"
Thanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without an
answer to this momentous question. Over the blackness of darkness a
light is shining. The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a land
of darkness and where the light is as darkness." The presence of a
serene and holy life pervades it. Above its pale tombs and crowded
burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him
who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at
Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." We
know not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what
it is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in that
dark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footsteps
lingers in the path. Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemer
in His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow. He who
ordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spirit
when its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I
have elsewhere used,
--when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
The soul may know
No fearful change nor sudden wonder,
Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.
And all we shrink from now may seem
No new revealing;
Familiar as our childhood's stream,
Or pleasant memory of a dream,
The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.
Serene and mild the untried light
May have its dawning;
As meet in summer's northern night
The evening gray and dawning white,
The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.