University of Virginia Library

It led me through the Churchyard, and methought
There entering, as I let the iron gate
Swing to behind me, that the change was good,—
The unquiet living for the quiet dead.
And at that moment, from the old church-tower
A knell resounded—“Man to his long home
Drew near”—“The mourners went about the streets;”
And there, few paces onward, to the right,
Close by the pathway, lay an open grave—
Not of the humbler sort, shaped newly out,
Narrow and deep, in the dark mould; when filled
To be roofed over by the living sod,
And left for all adornment (and so best)
To Nature's reverential hand.

The tomb
Made ready there for a new habitant
Was that of an old family: I knew it—
A very ancient altar-tomb, where Time
With his rough fretwork mocked the sculptor's art,
Feebly elaborate; heraldic shield
And mortuary emblems half effaced;
Deep sunken at one end, of many names
Graven with suitable inscription, each
Upon the shelving slab and sides, scarce now
Might any but an antiquarian eye
Make out a letter. Five-and-fifty years
The door of that dark dwelling had shut in
The last admitted sleeper. She, 'twas said,
Died of a broken heart—a widowed mother
Following her only child, by violent death
Cut off untimely—and the whisper went,
By his own hand. The tomb was ancient then,
When they two were interred; and they the first
For whom, within the memory of man,
It had been opened; and their names filled up—
With sharp-cut newness mocking the old stone—
The last remaining space. And so it seemed
The gathering was complete; the appointed number
Laid in the sleeping chamber, and sealed up
Inviolate, till the great reckoning day.
The few remaining of the name dispersed,
The family fortunes dwindled, till at last
They sank into decay, and out of sight,
And out of memory; till an aged man,
Passed by some parish very far away,
To die in ours—his legal settlement—
Claimed kindred with the long-forgotten race,
Its sole survivor, and in right thereof—
Of that affinity—to moulder with them
In the old family grave.

“A natural wish,”
Said the authorities; and “sure enough
He was of the old stock—the last descendant;
And it would cost no more to bury him
Under the old cracked tombstone, with its scutcheons,
Than in the common ground.” So graciously
The boon was granted, and he died content.
And now the pauper's funeral had set forth,
And the bell tolled—not many strokes nor long—
Pauper's allowance;—he was coming home.
But while the train was yet a good way off—
The workhouse burial train—I stopt to look
Upon the scene before me; and methought—
Oh! that some gifted painter could behold
And give duration to that living picture,
So rich in moral and pictorial beauty,
If seen arightly by the spiritual eye,
As with the bodily organ!

The old tomb,
With its quaint tracery, gilded here and there
With sunlight glancing through the o'erarching lime,
Far flinging its cool shadow, flickering light;
Our grey-haired sexton, with his hard grey face—
A living tombstone—resting on his mattock
By the low portal; and just over right,
His back against the lime-tree, his thin hands
Locked in each other, hanging down before him
As with their own dead weight, a tall slim youth,
With hollow hectic cheek, and pale parched lip,
And labouring breath, and eye upon the ground
Fast rooted, as if taking measurement
Betime for his own grave. I stopt a moment,
Contemplating those thinkers—Youth and Age
Marked for the sickle, as it seemed, the unripe
To be first gathered. Stepping forward, then,
Down to the house of death, with vague expectance
I sent a curious, not unshrinking gaze.
There lay the burning head and broken heart
Long, long at rest; and many a thing beside
That had been life—warm, sentient, busy life!—
Had hungered, thirsted, laughed, wept, hoped, and feared,
Hated and loved, enjoyed and agonised.
Where of all this was all I looked to see?—
The mass of crumbling coffins, some belike
Flattened and shapeless? Even in this damp vault
With more completeness could the old Destroyer
Have done his darkling work? Yet lo! I looked
Into a small square chamber, swept and clean,
Except that on one side, against the wall,
Lay a few fragments of dark rotten wood,
And a small heap of fine, rich, reddish earth
Was piled up in a corner.

“How is this?”
In stupid wonderment I asked myself,
And dull of apprehension. Turning then
To the old Sexton—“Tell me, friend,” I said,
“Here should be many coffins—where are they?”