Rang o'er thy waves, and on yon green hill's brow,
Glittered the serried steel.
And still thy name shall be
A watchword for the brave of Freedom's clime,
And every patriot's heart will turn to thee,
Brooklyn, N. Y.
GREENWOOD CEMETERY.
OW soft and pure the sunlight falls
On this lone city of the dead,
How gilds the cold and marble walls,
Where autumn's crimson leaves are shed:
The gentle uplands and the glades
No sad, funereal aspect wear;
But, as the summer's greenness fades,
In their new garments seen more fair.
Look, Mary, - what a splendid scene
Around us in the distance lies!
Bright breaks the silver sea between
This island and the western skies.
How still with all her towers and domes
The city sleeps on yonder shore,
How many thousand happy homes
Yon starless sky is bending o'er!
Happy - although this sacred spot
The happiest may receive at last
How may their memories be forgot,
Save when some casual glance is cast
By tearless eyes upon their graves,
And passing strangers bend to learn
O'er whom some tree its foliage waves,
Whose name adorns some sculptured urn.
Oh! mournful fate! to die unknown
And leave no constant heart to pine; -
And yet, ere many years have flown,
Such fate, dear Mary, may be mine.
Alone I live, and I shall die
With no sweet hand like thine to close -
When from my sight earth's miseries fly
My eyelids in their long repose.
SIDE IDE by side rise the two great cities,
Afar on the traveller's sight;
One, black with the dust of labor,
One, solemnly still and white.
Apart, and yet together,
They are reached in a dying breath,
But a river flows between them,
And the river's name is - Death.
Apart, and yet together,
Together, and yet apart,
As the child may die at midnight
On the mother's living heart.
So close come the two great cities,
With only the river between;
And the grass in the one is trampled,
But the grass in the other is green.
The hills with uncovered foreheads,
Like the disciples meet,
While ever the flowing water
Is washing their hallowed feet.
And out on the glassy ocean,
The sails in the golden gloom
Seem to me but moving shadows
Of the white emmarbled tomb.
Anon, from the hut and the palace
Anon, from early till late,
They come, rich and poor together,
Asking alms at thy Beautiful Gate.
And never had life a guerdon
So welcome to all to give,
In the land where the living are dying,
As the land where the dead may live.
O silent City of Refuge
On the way to the City o'erhead!
The gleam of thy marble milestones
Tells the distance we are from the dead.
Full of feet, but a city untrodden,
Full of hands, but a city unbuilt,
Full of strangers who know not even
That their life-cup lies there spilt.
They know not the tomb from the palace,
They dream not they ever have died:
God be thanked they never will know it
Till they live on the other side!
From the doors that death shut coldly
On the face of their last lone woe :
They came to thy glades for shelter
Who had nowhere else to go.
GOING TO GREENWOOD.
ARY and I were going together
Down to Greenwood's City of Rest;
Going down, in the summer weather,
Where slept the friends we had loved the best.
I had a sister, loved and cherished,
Waiting there my day of doom;
Mary two babes that together perished
Like twin roses in their bloom.
Green, we knew, was the grass above them, Bright the flowers, like Heaven's tears, Scattered by hands we had taught to love them, Every sunny day for years.
Mary and I were going together,
Some bright day, -as dear friends come With the cheerful smile of sunny weather, To visit our dead in their quiet home.
We would sit fair flowers wreathing
For the marble overhead;
Hearing the birds sing, as if breathing
Our own love for the early dead.
Mary and I, through all the seasons,
Set we times for our pilgrim day;
Hindered yet by a hundred reasons,
Till the summer had passed away.
Autumn is here with its voice of wailing,
Greenwood's walks are bleak and bare;
Nature's beauty is sinking, failing,
Mary has gone before me there.
The City of Rest has a fair new-comer;
O'er Mary's grave the sad winds moan:
When the skies are bright, next summer,
I shall go to Greenwood alone.
ERE are the houses of the dead.
And age and manhood, stricken in his strength,
Hold solemn state and awful silence keep,
While Earth goes murmuring in her ancient path,
And troubled Ocean tosses to and fro
Upon his mountainous bed impatiently,
And many stars make worship musical
In the dim-aisled abyss, and over all
The Lord of Life, in meditation sits
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