Page:Landon in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1836.pdf/46



If there be one object more material, more revolting, more gloomy than another, it is a crowded churchyard in a city. It has neither sympathy nor memory. The pressed-down stones lie heavy upon the very heart. The sunshine cannot get at them for smoke. There is a crowd; and, like most crowds, there is no companionship. Sympathy is the softener of death, and memory of the loved and the lost is the earthly shadow of their immortality. But who turns aside amid those crowds that hurry through the thronged and noisy streets?—No one can love London better than I do; but never do I wish to be buried there. It is the best place in the world for a house, and the worst for a grave. An Irish patriot once candidly observed to me, "Give me London to live in; but let me die in green Ireland:"—now, this is precisely my opinion.

PRAY thee lay me not to rest Among these mouldering bones; Too heavily the earth is prest By all these crowded stones.

Life is too gay—life is too near— With all its pomp and toil; I pray thee do not lay me here, In such a world-struck soil.

The ceaseless roll of wheels would wake