Classic Poem

Amongst these graves where good men lie,
Mute, ozier-bound, in dreamless sleep,
Above whose heads the browsing sheep
And careless painted butterfly
Pasture and sport in summer grass,

Brown as the blasted Dead-Sea fruit,
As banned to barrenness and dearth,
Behold yon patch of rusty earth,
Whereon no turf has taken root,
No summer shadows flit and pass,

Whilst here, a garden neat and trim,
All fuchsia-fringed and pansy-starred,
With gilded gateways locked and barred,
And double-daisies for a rim
Surrounds a tomb, with foot and head

Guarded by angel-forms that weep,
In marble from Carrara's mines,
Whilst Fame a laurel chaplet twines,
And golden letters, graven deep,
Blazon the honours of the dead.

He died as clarions smote the air
To tell of vict'ry and renown;
They brought him to his native town,
Near which the lands and lordships were
That owed him fealty in the west

She died in those despairing days,
Bowed down by all the griefs she had,
And only that they deemed her mad,
They buried her by no cross-ways,
And drove no stake into her breast.

She sleeps beneath yon rusty peat,
Withered as by avenging fires;
Amongst the noblest of his sires
He lies with angels at his feet,
And golden gates to keep secure.

And 'twixt the two, all ozier-bound,
Half melted into mother earth,
Scarce two feet long, by one in girth,
A little nameless baby-mound
Pleads for the sins of rich and poor.