General Chat

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MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS.

WHAT matter where our dust is laid:—
The funeral pomp and show are vain ;
The proudest monument must fade,
And crumble back to dust again.

The dead must soon forgotten lie;
The mourners be themselves the mourned ;
And strangers soon will hurry by,
Nor care whose dust is here interned.

The myriad millions gone before,
Who lived and died and are forgot,
Have left for record little more
Than that they were, and now, are not.

To mark the spot where sleep the dead,
Each spear of grass a tomb-stone springs;
The very dust on which we tread
May once have been a slave's or king's:

'Tis all the same.—Earth claims her own;
The form she lent the spirit here,
To draw nutrition from her zone,
Is wanted in another sphere:

Perchance to deck the floral band,
Or give the soil more strength when tilled,
Or be of some use on the land;—
A task, in life, it scarce fulfilled.

The dead then leave to mother earth,
While living millions ever long
For light to guide their spirits' birth,
To see the right, and shun the wrong.

Oh! take them gently by the hand,
Love them, and teach their souls to love,
That they may join the blissful band,
Forever in the courts above.

Trust not a stone to bear thy name
The fame is lost which it imparts:
Who for his dust a tear would claim,
Must write his name on living hearts.

And they will bear it on to fame,—
Its sound shall make their pulses thrill,
When, heeding neither praise nor blame,
Who bore it slumbers cold and still.