Page:Poems Jackson.djvu/109

  Saying, with trembling lips: "No, no!
 For stone more beautiful than this we seek.
  Sculptor, dost thou not know
  What lines will make the marble show
   A deeper grief?" Ah! mourners, speak
   In lower voice. Ye do not see
    What presence guards
 The stone. More than ye dream retards
 Your will. The stone waits there for me.
   My soul in bondage lies
     I must arise.

Then, when I have descended, and the stone
 Above the stairway has been set,
The tears of those who reckoned me their own
 A little space will wet
The grass; but soon all saddened days
Count up to comforted and busy years:
All living men must go their ways
And leave their dead behind. The tideless light
Of sun and moon and stars,—silence of night
And noise of day, and whirling of the great
  Round world itself,—yea,
All things which are and are not work to lay
  The dead away.
The crumbling of the stone, more late,
The sinking of the little mound
To unmarked level, where with noisy sound
Roam idle and unwitting feet,
Least tokens are and smallest part
  Of the oblivion complete
  Which wraps a human grave;