 | City Poems |  |
“To-day I chanced to pass
A churchyard covered with forgetful grass;
And as one puts the hair from off a face,
I put aside the grass; and, on the stones,
Saw roses wreathing bones:
And, in the rankest corner of the place,
Set in a ghastly scroll of skulls and flowers,
And belts of serpents twined and curled,
I traced a crowned and mantled Death,
Asleep upon a World.
How grim the carver's style—
The tarnished coffins, rotten palls,
The weeping of the charnel walls,—
When one is lord of happy hours,
When one is breathing priceless breath—
Made happy by a smile!
A churchyard covered with forgetful grass;
And as one puts the hair from off a face,
I put aside the grass; and, on the stones,
Saw roses wreathing bones:
And, in the rankest corner of the place,
Set in a ghastly scroll of skulls and flowers,
And belts of serpents twined and curled,
I traced a crowned and mantled Death,
Asleep upon a World.
How grim the carver's style—
The tarnished coffins, rotten palls,
The weeping of the charnel walls,—
155
When one is breathing priceless breath—
Made happy by a smile!
| City Poems | |