Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/321

 THE HERMIT OF MEL VERN IVA TER 3 1 1

What joy is this, where none rejoice ? There's none to listen to his voice, Save God above ;

��And, if he mourns, there's none to cheer,

And, when he dies, there's none to weep. His dust, unmoistened by a tear. Must drift ungraved ; there's no one near To mark his sleep.

Unless perhaps the wolf or crow.

That dragged his corpse 'mongst yonder stones, For some brief time his fate might know. Till dropping leaves and drizzly snow Enshroud his bones.

��THE GRAVE,

No false opinions here divide.

In friendly peace live man and brute : He and his cat are of one side, And, were they not, the world is wide — There's no dispute.

If he is sick, no man of skill

Shall come to thump and to explore. With purge and plaster, drop and pill. To order things but as God's will Ordered before.

The thought of Death will breed no fear, He'll wait his tap with a mind steady. A trifling change it will appear To one who was so long, while here, Half dead already.

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