The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

The dead in body are in soul alive;
Distinct locality to them belongs:
No more, like us, with sin and woe they strive,
But in those bowers, where rest the white-robed throng
With garments by atoning Blood made clean,—
Behold! pure Spirits who on earth have been.

In years departed, Superstition dared
That veil to ruffle with irrev'rent hand,
Behind whose folds lie undeclared
Secrets no bodied nature understands;
For there in awful shades, our God alone
Wields His dread sceptre, and holds back His throne!

But we are sense-blind, and too much adore
The painted dreams which time and space befall;
Full seldom do our hearts the dead restore,
Or back their features into life recall;
Their tombs like portals to oblivion were,
That closed upon us, when we laid them there.

Material life the sad horizon makes
Of half a worldling's creed pronounces true;
In soul a Sadducee, his reason takes
No holier vision and no higher view,
Than poor realities, which Flesh discerns,
And earth-sprung feeling into glory turns.

But Minds exist to whom the dead are dear;
Still in warm memory lives th' unburied past:
Their grief is something nobler than the tear
Impassion'd Feeling on their coffin cast;—
The disembodied to the heart and home,
Oft in pale dreams of resurrection come.

Shame on our souls! if narrow earth enclose
Spirits which have eternity to range;
If ne'er beyond the tomb a Christian throws
A thought which images their blest exchange,
Who neither bound, nor barr'd by blinding sense,
Reap in rapt bliss what Light and Love dispense.

A conscious portion of the Church are they
Who speed before us to the realm unknown;
Although no longer in the beams of day
They lift their brow, and call this life their own,
Yet do they all to that One Christ pertain,
Who out of dust shall rear their forms again.

Nor, let the worshipper of sense, who binds
To this base world an eagle-spirit down,
And only in the realm of Epicurus finds
His grandest sceptre and his brightest crown,—
Reflect on Hades, where the dead repose,
As whelm'd with darkness in a land of woes:

'Tis worse than pitiful, when men presume
Our God to limit to this world of crime;
Who call it vacancy beyond the tomb,
And make eternity succumb to time!
Whereas the Spirit, when unearth'd and free,
Is far diviner than this life can be.

Think on the numbers who to Christ have fled,
From babes too beautiful on earth to stay,
To those departing with a hoary head,
Beside whose couch 'twas heaven to watch and pray;—
Myriads which no created mind can count,
Complete the glory of that great amount.

And could we gaze beyond an earth-bound screen,
No barren solitude our eyes would view;
But, all empeopled with a host serene
The world of spirits would emerge as true,
And far more vital, glowing quick with mind,
Than this dull orb the Dead have left behind.

And oh! bethink thee, pilgrim, sad and lone,
Musing through capitals, where Ages dead
Lie sepulchred, and riven arch and stone
Reveal what desolation's curse hath bred,—
That all who throng'd some immemorial street,
Are mingled souls which now in Hades meet.

So, when thou linger'st on some battle-plain
Dyed by red carnage once, where Nations fell,
While banner'd thousands heard the iron rain
Of death-shot round about them roar, and swell,—
The spirits who that crimson light did face,
Are yet alive, and fill their destined place,

And in the churchyard, where some grassy mound
In trampled ruin all unweeded stands,
Or sculptured aisles, where marble tombs abound
And memory ponders while the mind expands,
Till saints and warriors, heroes, martyrs, all
Speak out of stone, and to the living call,—

Forget not, while the vaulted nave is trod,
That each unbodied is a thinking Soul
Under the blessing or the ban of God,
Replete with life, as when their felt control
By sceptred majesty, or moving speech,
The heart of empires and of men did reach.

Thus should we speculate on parted Mind,
And speak with tones of reverential truth,
Whene'er the screening veil of sense behind
Religion enters, and on age and youth
Dreams with pale awe, and hails the sumless host
Who still are loved, and not to faith the lost.

Yes, be our epitaphs of brighter cast,
And take our elegies a purer tone,
Nor speak, as if corporeal life surpass'd
The consciousness a spirit calls its own:—
Mere flesh can moulder, yet the Soul survives,
And in that thought there breathe immortal lives!