Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/607

1866.]

AN you hear the sparrow in the lane

Singing above the graves? she said.

He knows my gladness, he knows my pain,

Though spring be over and summer be dead.

His note hath a chime all cannot hear,

And none can love him better than I;

For he sings to me when the land is drear,

And makes it cheerful even to die.

'T is beautiful on this odorous morn,

When grasses are waving in every wind,

To know my bird is not forlorn,

That summer to him is also kind;—

But sweeter, when grasses no longer stir,

And every lilac-leaf is shed,

To know that my voiceful worshipper

Is singing above my voiceless dead.

NE of the first tendencies of sickness is to centralization. Every invalid at least begins by being pivotal in the household. But with the earliest hint that the case is chronic, things recoil to their own centres again; people begin to come and go in the gayest way; they laugh and eat immensely, and fly through the halls asking if one couldn't take a bit of stuffed veal. And while one still sinks lower, failing down to the verge of the grave, it is only to hear of the most cherished friends in another town leading the whirl with tableaux and private theatricals. Finally is realized the dire denouément, that, though one lay with breath flickering away, the daily grocer would come driving up without any velvet on his wheels or any softness in his voice, and that the whole routine of affairs is to proceed, whoever goes or stays. This cold-heartedness it seems will kill one at any rate. Rather the universe should sigh and be darkened. To pass unheeded is worse than to die. Just now it is impossible to compass even the satirical mood of Pope, who declared himself not at all uneasy that many men for whom he never had any esteem were likely to enjoy the world after him. But before one has time to die, the absent friends write such a kind, sorry letter, in which they do not say anything about private theatricals, and, as Thad Stevens said of that speech, one knows of course that it was all a hoax! Then the people who eat stuffed veal repent themselves, and send in a delicate broth or a bit of tenderloin, hovering softly in a sudden regard, and at length a healthier thought is born. It is to arise with desperate will, put a fresh rose in the bonnet and a delusive veil over the face, creeping down to the street with