“Strata jacent passim _suo_ quæque sub” _lapide_—
_corpora_, we might say, if the measure allowed. When the stone is a
slight one, it does not oppress the spirits of the traveller to
meditate by it; but these did seem a little heathenish to us; and so
are all large monuments over men’s bodies, from the pyramids down. A
monument should at least be “star-y-pointing,” to indicate whither the
spirit is gone, and not prostrate, like the body it has deserted. There
have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and
these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.
But why these stones, so upright and emphatic, like exclamation-points?
What was there so remarkable that lived? Why should the monument be so
much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a
stone to a bone? “Here lies,”—“Here lies”;—why do they not sometimes
write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?
“Having reached the term of his _natural_ life”;—would it not be truer
to say, Having reached the term of his _unnatural_ life? The rarest
quality in an epitaph is truth. If any character is given, it should be
as severely true as the decision of the three judges below, and not the
partial testimony of friends. Friends and contemporaries should supply
only the name and date, and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph.
Here lies an honest man,
Rear-Admiral Van.
———
Faith, then ye have
Two in one grave,
For in his favor,
Here too lies the Engraver.
Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true. But they
only are the true epitaphs which Old Mortality retouches.
A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of
nature by being buried in it. For the most part, the best man’s spirit
makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it is therefore much to
the credit of Little John, the famous follower of Robin Hood, and
reflecting favorably on his character, that his grave was “long
celebrous for the yielding of excellent whetstones.” I confess that I
have but little love for such collections as they have at the
Catacombs, Père la Chaise, Mount Auburn, and even this Dunstable
graveyard. At any rate, nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards
interesting to me. I have no friends there. It may be that I am not
competent to write the poetry of the grave. The farmer who has skimmed
his farm might perchance leave his body to Nature to be ploughed in,
and in some measure restore its fertility. We should not retard but
forward her economies.
Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, and the woods were gained
again, and we rowed slowly on before sunset, looking for a solitary
place in which to spend the night. A few evening clouds began to be
reflected in the water and the surface was dimpled only here and there
by a muskrat crossing the stream. We camped at length near Penichook
Brook, on the confines of what is now Nashville, by a deep ravine,
under the skirts of a pine wood, where the dead pine-leaves were our
carpet, and their tawny boughs stretched overhead. But fire and smoke
soon tamed the scene; the rocks consented to be our walls, and the
pines our roof. A woodside was already the fittest locality for us.
The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest
villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them,
more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably
inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and
occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the
sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The
very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude
and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background,
where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as the sun was setting
carried up our furniture, and soon arranged our house upon the bank,
and while the kettle steamed at the tent door, we chatted of distant
friends and of the sights which we were to behold, and wondered which
way the towns lay from us. Our cocoa was soon boiled, and supper set
upon our chest, and we lengthened out this meal, like old voyageurs,
with our talk. Meanwhile we spread the map on the ground, and read in
the Gazetteer when the first settlers came here and got a township
granted. Then, when supper was done and we had written the journal of
our voyage, we wrapped our buffaloes about us and lay down with our
heads pillowed on our arms listening awhile to the distant baying of a
dog, or the murmurs of the river, or to the wind, which had not gone to
rest:—
The western wind came lumbering in,
Bearing a faint Pacific din,
Our evening mail, swift at the call
Of its Postmaster General;
Laden with news from Californ’,
Whate’er transpired hath since morn,
How wags the world by brier and brake
From hence to Athabasca Lake;—
or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star which glimmered
through our cotton roof. Perhaps at midnight one was awakened by a
cricket shrilly singing on his shoulder, or by a hunting spider in his
eye, and was lulled asleep again by some streamlet purling its way
along at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine in our neighborhood.
It was pleasant to lie with our heads so low in the grass, and hear
what a tinkling ever-busy laboratory it was. A thousand little artisans
beat on their anvils all night long.
Far in the night as we were falling asleep on the bank of the
Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in
preparation for a country muster, as we learned, and we thought of the
line,—
“When the drum beat at dead of night.”
We could have assured him that his beat would be answered, and the
forces be mustered. Fear not, thou drummer of the night, we too will be
there. And still he drummed on in the silence and the dark. This stray
sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears from time to time, far,
sweet, and significant, and we listened with such an unprejudiced sense
as if for the first time we heard at all. No doubt he was an
insignificant drummer enough, but his music afforded us a prime and
leisure hour, and we felt that we were in season wholly. These simple
sounds related us to the stars. Ay, there was a logic in them so
convincing that the combined sense of mankind could never make me doubt
their conclusions. I stop my habitual thinking, as if the plough had
suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the world. How
can I go on, who have just stepped over such a bottomless skylight in
the bog of my life. Suddenly old Time winked at me,—Ah, you know me,
you rogue,—and news had come that IT was well. That ancient universe is
in such capital health, I think undoubtedly it will never die. Heal
yourselves, doctors; by God, I live.
Then idle Time ran gadding by
And left me with Eternity alone;
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the verge of sight,—
I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Something to which we
are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, our very Selves;
the one historic truth, the most remarkable fact which can become the
distinct and uninvited subject of our thought, the actual glory of the
universe; the only fact which a human being cannot avoid recognizing,
or in some way forget or dispense with.
It doth expand my privacies
To all, and leave me single in the crowd.
I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not
the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life.
I will not doubt the love untold,
Which not my worth nor want hath bought,
Which wooed me young and wooes me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.
What are ears? what is Time? that this particular series of sounds
called a strain of music, an invisible and fairy troop which never
brushed the dew from any mead, can be wafted down through the centuries
from Homer to me, and he have been conversant with that same aerial and
mysterious charm which now so tingles my ears? What a fine
communication from age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the
aspirations of ancient men, even such as were never communicated by
speech, is music! It is the flower of language, thought colored and
curved, fluent and flexible, its crystal fountain tinged with the sun’s
rays, and its purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds. A
strain of music reminds me of a passage of the Vedas, and I associate
with it the idea of infinite remoteness, as well as of beauty and
serenity, for to the senses that is farthest from us which addresses
the greatest depth within us. It teaches us again and again to trust
the remotest and finest as the divinest instinct, and makes a dream our
only real experience. We feel a sad cheer when we hear it, perchance
because we that hear are not one with that which is heard.
Therefore a torrent of sadness deep,
Through the strains of thy triumph is heard to sweep.
The sadness is ours. The Indian poet Calidas says in the Sacontala:
“Perhaps the sadness of men on seeing beautiful forms and hearing sweet
music arises from some faint remembrance of past joys, and the traces
of connections in a former state of existence.” As polishing expresses
the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of
heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music. That
harmony which exists naturally between the hero’s moods and the
universe the soldier would fain imitate with drum and trumpet. When we
are in health all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of
music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the
dawn. Marching is when the pulse of the hero beats in unison with the
pulse of Nature, and he steps to the measure of the universe; then
there is true courage and invincible strength.
Plutarch says that “Plato thinks the gods never gave men music, the
science of melody and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle the
ear; but that the discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous
fabric of the soul, and that of it that roves about the body, and many
times, for want of tune and air, breaks forth into many extravagances
and excesses, might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to their
former consent and agreement.”
Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only
assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass any man’s
faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which
it will be worth the while to learn. Formerly I heard these