In yonder cowslip’s sprinkled mead
A church’s tapering spire doth rise,
As if it were directing us
Unto a fairer paradise;
Within the yard, so fair and green,
Full many a grave is to be seen.
Often upon a summer’s eve
The church-yard’s smooth, green sward I’ve trod!
Reading the rugged epitaphs
Of those who lie beneath the sod;
But in one spot two graves were seen,
Which always stopp’d my wandering.
Upon one stone’s expansive front
Was writ, in language stiff and cold,
That he, who lay beneath that slab,
Had died when he was very old;
And at its close a simple line
Said, that his age was ninety-nine.
Another small and polish’d stone
Beside the former did appear;
It said, that that grave’s occupant
Had died when in his third year:
How eloquent the polish’d praise
Lavish’d on that child’s winning ways!
The old man lay beneath the stone,
Where nought in praise of him was told;
It only said, that there he lay,
And that he died when he was old:
It did not chronicle his years,
His joys and sorrows--hopes and fears.
Ninety-nine years of varying life
On gliding pinions by had fled;
(Oh what long years of toil and strife!)
Ere he was number’d with the dead;
But yet no line was left to tell
How he had liv’d, or how he fell!
Had he no wife,--no child,--no friend?
To cheer him as he pass’d away;
No one who would his name commend,
And wail as he was laid in clay?
Of this the record nought supplied,--
It only said he liv’d and died!
How must his soul have been oppress’d,
As intimates dropp’d from his side!
And he, almost unknown, was left
Alone,--upon this desert wide!
Wife--children--friends--all, all were gone,
And he left in the world alone!
His youthful friends had long grown old,
And then were number’d with the dead;
His step had totter’d, sight grown dim,
And ev’ry source of pleasure fled;
By nature’s law such must have been,
Th’ effect of the long years he’d seen!
But then the record nought supplied,
How he had spent this length’ned life;
Whether in peace and quietness,
Or had he worried been with strife:
Perhaps the muse to him had given
Visions of glory, fire from Heaven!
All is conjecture! He was laid
Beneath the cold, unfeeling clay,
His fame--if he had sigh’d for fame--
Had from remembrance pass’d away.
Hope, joy, fear, sorrow, all were fled,
And he lay number’d with the dead!
Oh! cold and cheerless is the thought,
That I shall be as he is now;
My very name remember’d not,
And fame’s wreath wither’d on my brow:
Of me no record be supplied,
But that I liv’d, and that I died!
Such is the tone of sorrowing thought
That through my heart has often past,
As, on a summer’s brightning eve,
A look upon those graves I’ve cast,
Where youth and age together lie,
Emblems of frail mortality!