How they whirl-how they trip,
How they smile, how they dally,
How blithesome they skip,
Going down to the valley;
Oh-ho, how they march,
Making sounds as they tread;
Ho-ho, how they skip,
Going down to the dead!
March-march-march!
Earth groans as they tread!
Each carries a skull;
Going down to the dead!
Every stride, every stamp,
Every footfall, is bolder;
'Tis a skeleton's tramp,
With a skull on his shoulder!
But ho! how he steps
With a high-tossing head,
That clay-covered bone,
Going down to the dead!
Author of Christ in Hades, a poem in eight Books, published in 1851. Mr. Lord is a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church].
A LITTLE blind girl wandering,
While daylight pales beneath the moon;
And with a brook meandering,
To hear its gentle tune.
The little blind girl by the brook,
It told her something, you might guess,
To see her smile, to see her look
Of listening eagerness.
Though blind, a never-silent guide
Flowed with her timid feet along;
And down she wandered by its side
To hear the running song.
And sometimes it was soft and low,
A creeping music in the ground;
And then, if something checked its flow,
A gurgling swell of sound.
And now, upon the other side,
She seeks her mother's cot,
And still the noise shall be her guide,
And lead her to the spot:
For to the blind, so little free
To move about beneath the sun,
Small things like this seem liberty---
Something from darkness won.
But soon she heard a meeting stream,
And on the bank she followed still;
It murmured on, nor could she tell
It was another rill.
"Ah! whither, whither, my little maid?
And wherefore dost thou wander here?"
"I seek my mother's cot," she said,
"And surely it is near."
"There is no cot upon this brook;
In yonder mountains dark and drear, Where sinks the sun, its source it took;Ah wherefore art thou here?"
"Oh! sir, you are not true nor kind;
It is the brook, I know its sound;
Ah! why would you deceive the blind?
I hear it in the ground."
And on she stepped, but grew more sad,
And weary were her tender feet;
The brook's small voice seemed not so glad,
Its song was not so sweet.
"Ah! whither, whither, my little maid?
And wherefore dost thou wander here?"
"I seek my mother's cot," she said,
"And surely it is near."
"There is no cot upon this brook."
"I hear its sound," the maid replied,
With dreamlike and bewildered look-
"I have not left its side."
"Oh go with me;
the darkness nears,
The first pale star begins to gleam."
The maid replied with bursting tears,
"It is the stream! It is the stream!"
[Born in 1819. A lawyer, author of various poems-the longest of which is named Alban, a romance of New York, published in 1848].
GREENWOOD CEMETERY.
HERE are the houses of the dead. Here youth,
And age, and manhood stricken in his strength,
Hold solemn state, and awful silence keep,
While Earth goes murmuring in her ancient path,
And troubled Ocean tosses to and fro
Upon his mountainous bed impatiently,
And many stars make worship musical
In the dim-aisled abyss, and over all
The Lord of Life in meditation sits
Changeless, alone, beneath the large white dome
Of Immortality.
Among these walks lined by the frequent tombs;
For it is very wonderful. Afar
The populous city lifts its tall bright spires,
And snowy sails are glancing on the bay,
As if in merriment-but here all sleep;
They sleep, these calm, pale people of the past.
Spring plants her rosy feet on their dim homesThey sleep.-Sweet Summer comes and calls, and calls,
With all her passionate poetry of flowers
Wed to the music of the soft south wind-
They sleep. The lonely Autumn sits and sobs
Between the cold white tombs, as if her heart
Would break-they sleep.-Wild Winter comes and
chants
Majestical the mournful sagas learned
Far in the melancholy North, where God
Walks forth alone upon the desolate seas-
They slumber still!-Sleep on, O passionless dead!
Ye make our world sublime: ye have a power
And majesty the living never had.
Here Avarice shall forget his den of gold,
Here Lust his beautiful victim, and hot Hate
His crouching foe. Ambition here shall lean.
Against Death's shaft, veiling the stern, bright eye
That, over-bold, would take the height of gods,
And know Fame's nothingness. The sire shall come,
The matron and the child, through many years,
To this fair spot, whether the plumèd hearse
Moves slowly through the winding walks, or Death
For a brief moment pauses: all shall come
To feel the touching eloquence of graves:
And therefore it was well for us to clothe
The place with beauty. No dark terror here
Shall chill the generous tropic of the soul;
But Poetry and her starred comrade Art
Shall make the sacred country of the dead
Magnificent. The fragrant flowers shall smile
Over the low, green graves; the trees shall shake
Their soul-like cadences upon the tombs;
The little lake, set in a paradise
Of wood, shall be a mirror to the moon
What time she looks from her imperial tent
In long delight at all below; the sea
Shall lift some stately dirge he loves to breathe
Over dead nations; while calm sculptures stand
On every hill, and look like spirits there.
That drink the harmony. Oh it is well!
Why should a darkness scowl on any spot
Where man grasps immortality? Light, light,
And art, and poetry, and eloquence,
And all that we call glorious, are its dower.
Oh ye whose mouldering frames were brought and placed
By pious hands within these flowery slopes
And gentle hills, where are ye dwelling now?
For man is more than element.
Lives in the body as the sunbeam lives
In trees or flowers that were but clay without.
Then where are ye, lost sunbeams of the mind?
Are ye where great Orion towers and holds
Eternity on his stupendous front?
Or where pale Neptune in the distant space.
Shows us how far, in His creative mood,
With pomp of silence and concentred brows,
Walked forth the Almighty? Haply ye have gone
Where other matter roundeth into shapes
Of bright beatitude: or do ye know
Aught of dull space or time, and its dark load
Of aching weariness?
But He whose love created them of old,
To cheer his solitary realm and reign,
With love will still remember them.
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