The Sanctuary :: :: University of Virginia Library

Softer than moonlight o'er dim landscape stealing,
Is the faint presence of that mystic feeling
When Voices come, like resurrection-breath,
Ton'd with the tenderness of childhood's truth,
Or, touch'd with grief, or glad with glowing youth,
Serenely wafted from the world of death.

And now, as in the sepulchre of Time,
Toll'd to his grave by midnight's fun'ral chime,
Sinks the dead Year, we lift our hearts to Thee,
Timeless and changeless, an almighty Now,
Before Whose will the universe shall bow,—
The sightless Fountain of eternity!

Let tombs have tongues; and eloquence be heard
By listening conscience, more than spoken word,
While to the Present speaks the awful Past;
The longest-dead becomes a living voice,
Whose wisdom cries,—“Make God thy glorious choice,
And with the peerage of the Saints be class'd!”

And, as with Abel, so can heaven-born Mind
Breathe through the Church, and still instruct mankind
From age to age eternal in its tone;—
Buried in flesh, but mentally alive
The battle-words of sainted Heroes strive,
And summon earth to be the Saviour's own!

Martyrs are miracles, whose voice controls
The grand episcopate of blood-priced souls,
Long as the clock of Time shall strike the hours;—
Though dead, they live, though dumb, they wield a speech,

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Whose tongueless accents unto conscience reach,
Ring through the soul, and rouse its dormant powers.

Peter and Paul,—oh, have they ever died,
Who, to the death, proclaimed The Crucified?
Preach they not still, with rhetoric sublime,
The Earth, their pulpit, and their audience, Man,
Far as God's diocess extends its plan,—
Sermons whose texts are oracles for Time?

Confessors, too, and champions for their Lord,
Eternity embalms each dying word
They uttered forth, from dungeon, stake, or fires;
Their tombs are altars, where religion prays,
And votive youth may consecrate its days
To deeds and darings, such as heaven inspires.

Baptised ambition is a god-like thing;
And wafts the soul, as on seraphic wing,
High o'er the selfish dreams of world-renown,—
For Christ to speak, when dust and darkness close
Round some dead martyr in his deep repose,
And pales the lustre of an Angel's crown.

And fameless dwellers, in some village cot,
By heaven remember'd, though on earth forgot,
With saintliness may so inspire a home,
That, greenly o'er them while the turf-grave lies,
Their pure example preaches from the skies
Truths, which o'erawe the erring when they roam.

And ah! how oft may voice maternal be
Like music, breathing Love's eternity,
Heard by the heart, in night-dreams of the dead
And so, immortalise with tender power
The vanish'd haunts of childhood's vernal hour,
That age forgets the cycles which have fled.

Nor, can the meanest Lazarus who dies,
Unwept, unknown, unwatch'd by human eyes,
An outcast-weed on earth's sepulchral wild,—
Speechless remain; because, some home, or heart

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Took from his life a portion and a part,
That made it purer, or the more defiled.

And, warning Guides, whose wisdom breathed of love,
And spake below, what Angels think above,
How from the tomb their deathless words ascend!
Alive,—we heard them oft with rude cold ear;
But now, we prize them as sublimely-dear,
Till the heart echoes with the name of “friend.”

Nor, is the Pastor sermonless, though dumb:
Still from his grave may preaching magic come
Far more resistless than his living breath;
And truths, that once were braved with impious mock,
Or, fell like sunbeams on a herbless rock,
Divinely sway him,—now they speak from death!

Hebrews xi. 4.