| Until methought we trod
a wide flat heath,
Where yew and cypress darkly seemed to wave
O'er countless tombs, so beautiful, that death
Seemed here to make a garden of the grave!
All that is holy, tender, full of grace,
Was sculptured on the monuments around,
And many a line the musing eye could trace,
Which spoke unto the heart without a sound.
There lay the warrior and the son of song,
And there - in silence till the judgment-day -
The orator, whose all-persuading tongue
Had moved the nations with resistless sway:
There slept pale men whom science taught to climb
Restlessly upward all their labouring youth;
Who left, half conquered, secrets which in time
Burst on mankind in ripe and glorious truth.
He that had gazed upon the steadfast stars,
And could foretell the dark eclipse's birth,
And when red comets in their blazing cars
Should sweep above the awed and troubled earth: -
He that had sped brave vessels o'er the seas,
Which swiftly bring the wanderer to his home,
Uncanvassed ships, which move without a breeze,
Their bright wheels dashing through the ocean foam: -
All, who in this life's bounded brief career
Had shone amongst, or served their fellow-men,
And left a name embalmed in glory here,
Lay calmly buried on that magic plain.
And he who wandered with me in my dream,
Told me their histories as we onward went,
Till the grave shone with such a hallowed beam,
Such pleasure with their memory seemed blent,
That, when we looked to heaven, our upward eyes
With no funereal sadness mocked the skies!
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