Page:Where the Dead Men Lie.djvu/238

 The burial-ground where Boake lies is situated in an elevated part of North Sydney, some half-hour's journey from the city proper. It is a small enclosure, thickly studded with the grotesque monuments conventionally associated with grief. Here and there a poorer grave, adorned with shells and coloured pebbles, more impresses the stranger: it is like the rudimentary art of a bower-bird, yet so pitifully earnest. Near the western boundary lies a narrow plot with plain stone kerbing, and this inscription on a marble slab—

And one reflects on the world of impotent potentialities that died with the baffled idealist beneath.

It is no wonder that the Earth Heaps shining Spring on Spring; That flowers bud in tender birth, And ever new birds sing: This is the harvest-home of woe From buried ecstasies below.

A mother's hands let flowers fall On little graves she loved: The Earth, who loves and mothers all, With the same impulse moved, Doth sorrowfully every year Strew flowers above her children dear.