Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/463

1858.]

vales are sweet with fern and rose,
 * Our hills are maple-crowned;

But not from them our fathers chose
 * The village burying-ground.

The dreariest spot in all the land
 * To Death they set apart;

With scanty grace from Nature's hand,
 * And none from that of Art

A winding wall of mossy stone,
 * Frost-flung and broken, lines

A lonesome acre thinly grown
 * With grass and wandering vines.

Without the wall a birch-tree shows
 * Its drooped and tasselled head;

Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
 * Fern-leafed with spikes of red.

There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain
 * Like white ghosts come and go,

The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
 * The cow-bell tinkles slow.

Low moans the river from its bed,
 * The distant pines reply;

Like mourners shrinking from the dead,
 * They stand apart and sigh.

Unshaded smites the summer sun,
 * Unchecked the winter blast;

The school-girl learns the place to shun,
 * With glances backward cast

For thus our fathers testified—
 * That he might read who ran—

The emptiness of human pride,
 * The nothingness of man.

They dared not plant the grave with flowers,
 * Nor dress the funeral sod,

Where, with a love as deep as ours,
 * They left their dead with God.

The hard and thorny path they kept,
 * From beauty turned aside;