Virtue--with the first dawn of infant mind,
Falling from lips that made it holier seem;
Goodness--when deeds with precept were combined,
To show the world--“religion is no dream;”
Tears--when my heart was all too sad to weep them,
Cares--when affliction press’d me bitterly,
Watching--when none but love like thine could keep them,
Rebukes--yet with a blessing in thine eye;
An eye that watch’d me and would never sleep,
A well-timed word to keep me in the way,
A look, that made me go from thee and weep,
A faith, that made thee watch, and kneel, and pray--
These, these are thine--O! sweet are then to me,
Mother! the thoughts of home, of my sweet home, and thee.
Thus I valued her. But she’s in her grave now, and I often go there to
watch and weep, and please myself with the vain fancy, that her spirit
is bending over me. I always feel holier after it--as if I had come
from another world--had been beyond the grave--had unravelled the great
mysteries of life and death, and could now look upon life unsway’d by
that natural Atheism which ever clings to humanity, and mingles in all
our aspirations for the future. Watching and prayer ever better us. But
by the grave of a loved one, there are still holier influences. We see
them through the mirror of feeling. If they had faults, they have them
no longer; and their virtues, we canonize them--they are relics--they
are talismans which we lay on our hearts, and they are holier for the
contact.
Earth’s thoughts come not to the grave’s side. The idle, the giddy and
gay, they do not jest here--the song of triumph ceases, the unfinished
quip dies on the lip that made it. The famed, the haughty, the
ambitious, they bring not their proud thoughts with them--they tread
its holy precincts, and their schemes are forgotten. The school boy’s
whistle is lower here, and the butterfly he chases so eagerly, scales
the white palings and escapes--he will not follow him. The very flowers
that bloom here, the osiers that swathe the grave of that little one
and twine about the head stones--they teach us by their freshness, and
our thoughts stir up the fountains in us, and the heart is hallowed by
it.
Come hither, thou parent--a father perhaps. This was thy heart’s pride
and passion. Hope and promise were his. You had already marked his
path. Here were the flowers--there the thorns. You saw him in fancy,
out of his boyhood--the youth--the young man--his cheek glowing for the
contest. Death came--and you laid him here.
Come hither, thou parent--a mother perhaps. This was thy first born.
You bore him on your heart; you nursed him; you hung over him; you wept
and prayed for him as mothers only can do; and _you_ too, have laid
him here. The little form you decked so--the locks that swung over a
brow of silver--the face with its beauty, and light, and sweetness, and
all the innocency of happy childhood--the clear silver shout of his
joy--the step that ran to thee--the lip that pouted for the morning and
evening kiss--aye! here they are--look at them.
And who art thou, mourner?--thou that lookest not up to the glorious
sky, or abroad on the fair face of the creation of God; but, wrapped in
the selfishness and solitude of thy grief, standest here like a lone
monument of dead men’s histories--who art thou? Thine eye is on that
slab there; ’tis a maiden’s. Thou lovedst her perhaps; her heart beat
to thee; her lip was free to thy wooing. She was decked for a bridal;
the rite had sealed her thine; and death strewed thy bridal couch with
rosemary, and rue, and the gloomy cypress.
And what do these here? They come here to weep, for it sanctifies them.
They come from the roar, and bustle, and heartlessness of life, and
they would listen awhile to the eloquence of the shrouded dead. O!
the dead are eloquent! The voice is low, yet louder than that of many
waters! They tell us that our loved ones were not ours! They tell us
that they were lent to us, and have now been reclaimed! They tell us,
that though saddening, ’tis sweet to think of them, for they tie us and
our souls to the purity of Heaven!
Some men shudder as they look into a grave; and well they may, some of
the world. But the heart is wrong which feels thus. Does the sight of
land give pain to the shipwrecked? is the hope of freedom unwelcome
at the dungeon? does the sound of waters please in the desert? does
the thought of sleep annoy us when weary? does the hope of oblivion
give pain when the heart aches? Why then should the thought of what
is greater gain than all these come to our hearts, but to waken their
holiest emotions?
O! ’tis because there is a power within,
Whisp’ring of good neglected--ill preferred--
Duties cast off, and faculties misus’d!
It is, because the mortal triumphs, while
The purer passions, crushed or rooted out,
Leave him to be enslaved,--and thus in moments
When meditation, like a vestal waits
Upon his heart, the buoyancy and peace
Which should be his, give place to heaviness,
And indefinable wretchedness of soul.
O! could the heart be school’d--could it be made
True to its nature--to the impress graved
Upon it by the hand of Deity--
Could it be made to balance good and ill,
With purpose to be wise--could it but choose
The pure, and love it for its purity--
How blissful then, were thoughts of death and Heaven!
* * * * *
There--young lady! I’ve _thought_ for your “Omnibus,”--pray, what do
you think?
*
* * * * *