Is not the earth a burial place
Where countless millions sleep,
The entrance to the abode of death,
Where waiting mourners weep,
And myriads at his silent gates
A constant vigil keep?
The sculptor lifts his chisel, and
The final stroke is come,
But, dull as the marble lip he hews,
His stiffened lip is dumb;
Though the Spoiler hath cast a holier work,
He hath called to a holier home!
The soldier bends his gleaming steel,
He counts his laurels o'er,
And speaks of the wreaths he yet may win
On many a foreign shore;
But his Master declares with a sterner voice,
He shall break a lance no more!
The mariner braved the deluge long,
He bow'd to the sweeping blast,
And smiled when the frowning heavens above
Were the deepest overcast;
He hath perish'd beneath a smiling sky--
He hath laid him down at last.
Far in the sea's mysterious depths
The lowly dead are laid,
Hath not the ocean's dreadful voice
Their burial service said?
Have not the quiring tempests rung
The dirges of the dead?
The vales of our native land are strewn
With a thousand pleasant things;
The uplands rejoicing in the light
Of the morning's flashing wings;
Even there are the martyrs' rugged cairns--
The resting-place of kings!
And man outpours his heart to heaven,
And "chants his holiest hymn,"
But anon his frame is still and cold,
And his sparkling eyes are dim--
And who can tell but the home of death
Is a happier home to him?