Classic Poem

Calm is it in the dim cathedral cloister,
Where lie the dead all couch'd in marble rare,
Where the shades thicken, and the breath hangs moister
Than in the sunlit air:

Where the chance ray that makes the carved stone whiter,
Tints with a crimson, or a violet light
Some pale old Bishop with his staff and mitre,
Some stiff crusading knight!

Sweet is it where the little graves fling shadows
In the green churchyard, on the shaven grass,
And a faint cowslip fragrance from the meadows
O'er the low wall doth pass!

More sweet — more calm in that fair valley's bosom
The burial place in Ephron's pasture ground,
Where the oil-olive shed her snowy blossom,
And the red grape was found,

What time the pastoral prince with love undying
Rose up in anguish from the face of death,
And weigh'd the silver shekels for its buying
Before the sons of Heth.

Here, when the measure of his days was number'd
— Days few, and evil in this vale of tears! —
At Sarah's side the faithful Patriarch slumber'd,
An old man full of years:

Here, holy Isaac, meek of heart and gentle,
And the fair maid who came to him from far,
And the sad sire who knew all throes parental,
And meek-eyed Leah, are;

She rests not here, the beautiful of feature,
For whom her Jacob wrought his years twice o'er,
And deem'd them but as one, for that fair creature,
So dear the love he bore!

Nor Israel's son beloved, who brought him sleeping
With a long pomp of woe to Canaan's shade,
Till all the people wonder'd at the weeping
By the Egyptians made.

Like roses from the same tree gather'd yearly,
And flung together in one vase to keep, —
Some but not all who loved so well, and dearly,
Lie here in quiet sleep.

What though the Moslem mosque be in the valley,
Though faithless hands have seal'd the sacred cave,
And the red Prophet's children shout " El Allah, "
Over the Hebrew's grave:

Yet a day cometh when those white walls shaking
Shall give again to light the living dead,
And Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, re-awaking
Spring from their rocky bed.