Classic Poem

Press down the fresh and fragrant sod;
Press gently, for there lies beneath
A heart as fresh and blithe, and Death
Bears Nature's son to Nature's God.

His was a genuine human heart,
Not wholly void of blot and blur;
A hand aye free to minister
And prompt to take the wronged one's part;

A voice uplifted for the right
As God had given the right to see;
A love that clung to liberty
Through gloom and glare of dubious fight.

He was a part of Nature's self,
As are the waves and singing-birds,
The full-voiced pines, the quiet herds,
Or fabled faun or woodland elf.

O mirror of the sun and shower
And rivulet and waterfall,
And that deep thrill that runs through all
Of mingled merriment and power!

And marked you not when, sadly slow,
They laid his body in the earth, —
How dead to pain, how deaf to mirth! —
Creation's sympathetic woe.

Great tear-drops rained from out the skies;
In deathly shade the landscape lay;
And all the concave dull and gray
Was resonant with muffled cries,

Like a strong heart's unuttered moan,
That struggles in the heaving breast
Through the long night that brings no rest,
And winds went by with dismal moan.

And then the thunder requiem pealed
Like an archangel's voice on high;
Yet seemed its awful monody
To hint some glory unrevealed.

Well, he is gone, and we have lost
One more of God's best gifts to man,
A strong, true soul, whose arch could span
The gulf, by others all uncrossed,

Which severs beauty's world, that rolls
In waves of light on every hand,
From the dull earth whereon we stand,
The voiceless sphere of vulgar souls.

He soothed not with subservient lyre
The lettered leisure of the wise,
Afar from common ears and eyes,
But raised from lower thoughts to higher.

The mighty monarch mass of men, —
His instrument the human heart.
Its every chord beneath his art
Thrilled to the full and thrilled again.

Press down the fresh and fragrant sod;
Press gently, for there lies beneath
A heart as fresh and blithe. In death
Lo! Nature's son joins Nature's God.