Lines in Pleasant Places :: :: University of Virginia Library

'Twas busy seed time, yet in many a field
Labor was stayed, and those whose sturdy hands
Beckoned to thrift by timely ministries
Had left their calling, and, in decent garb,
Thronged onward, where the melancholy bell
Proclaimed the doings of relentless Death;
To give their sympathy to those who mourned,
And shed, themselves, a tributary tear,
For one among them, who had bowed his head
To the stern summons, painfully delayed.
And then, amid the blooming sweets of spring—
The trees unfolding in the bright array
That clothes the joyous season—swept along
The sombre hearse, and the long train of those
Who mourned, as relatives and friends, for him
Whose loving eyes had closed to scenes of earth,
To open on the brighter ones of heaven.
They came from far and near, tender and sad,
The last kind offices on earth to pay,
And Nature seemed to hush, and hold her breath,
As on the solemn pageant swept, to where
The grave was waiting, and funereal rites.
It was no hero that they honored thus—

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No statesman, scholar, bard, nor one whose voice
Had thrilled the public ear by trick of words;
Nor one who'd thrust himself before the gaze
Of crowds to win fame's meed by other means.
A simple farmer—this, and nothing more—
An unpretending, plain, and honest man,
With no ill brooding in his truthful heart,
And none to utter by his manly lips:
Loving the good, and doing good and true
In all his dealings with his fellow-man.
I gazed upon the pageant, and of one
Who was of those that formed the waiting group,
I asked the meaning of the tribute shown—
Tempting the answer that I knew before:
“Why this display of grief?” I said, “for him
Whose lot was cast in such a homely mould?
Why do the farmers leave their fields for this?”
He was a man uncouth—to sentiment unused—
But, brushing off a tear that dimmed his eye,
He said, half sternly, “Why, the fact is here;
We honor pay, because we loved him so.”
Ye grand and mighty, where is honor found,
So glorious in its offerings, as this,
That rests its giving on the simple claim
For honor's tribute that it loveth so?