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Is wafted somewhere to a higher sphere,

Where it is answered with a perfect peace,—

That not a soul from earth does find release,

Release from darkness and the night of fear,

Without a morn of better hope on high.

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The grave has, after all, the truest peace;

The graveyard is the greatest moralist;

And it was wisdom that in days of eld,

The living with the dead communion held,

For they did worship in their very midst,

A custom which in our good times must cease.

No longer can we lay our dead within

The shadow of the church, but far away,

In some secluded spot where seldom seen

Is their last resting-place, beneath the green,

Where some good farmer makes his loads of hay,

And murmurs that it is in places thin.

We do not, in this shallow age, endure

To think of death, such thoughts do not amuse,

But mock the things which we are striving after;

It tickles not our vein of silly laughter,

The subject is unpleasant and obtruse,

Of which the preachers even are not sure.