IN A CEMETERY

When Autumn's melancholy robes the land

With silence, and sad fadings mystical

Of other years move thro’ the mellow fields,

I turn unto this meadow of the dead,

Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees,

And wonder if my resting shall be dug

Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway

Of yonder cypress — lair of winds that rove

As Valkyries sent from Valhalla's court

In search of worthy slain.

And sundry times with questioning I tease

The entombed of their estate — seeking to know

Whether‘ tis sweeter in the grave to feel

The oblivion of Nature's silent flow,

Or here to wander wistful o'er her face.

Whether the harvesting of pain and joy

Which men call Life ends so, or whether death

Pours the warm chrism of Immortality

Into each human heart whose glow is spent.

And oft the Silence hears me. For a voice

Of sighing wind may answer, or a gaze,

Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face.

Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold,

That ebb along the west, revealings wing

And tremble, like ethereal swift tongues

Unskilled of human speech, about my heart —

Till youth, age, death, even earth's all, it seems,

Are but brave moments wakened in that Soul,

To whom infinities are as a span,

Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun,

And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds

Into the ceaseless surging of the sea....

Then twilight hours lead back my wandered spirit

From out the wilderness of mystery

Whence none may find a path to the Unknown,

And chastened to content I turn me home.