Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/299

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GRAVE.
291

GRAVE.

The grave is a very small hillock, but we can see farther from it, when standing on it, than from the highest mountain in all the world.


Dark lattice! letting in eternal day!

Young.


For ages the world has been waiting and watching; millions, with broken hearts, have hovered around the yawning abyss; but no echo has come back from the engulfing gloom—silence, oblivion, covers all. If indeed they survive; if they went away whole and victorious, they give us no signals. We wait for years, but no messages come from the far-away shore to which they have gone.


The earth doth not cover our beloved, but heaven hath received him; let us tarry for a while, and we shall be in his company.

St. Basil.


It is sweet to hold converse with the pious dead. A holy influence emanates from their blissful home, and fills the soul with a feeling of sacred and solemn awe. The spirit whispers peace, and fills the waiting caverns of the soul with the bright hope of again meeting those whom we believe to be in the abode of redeemed and happy spirits.


Is there ever a time when the sense of desolation caused by death rolls over one so like a flood as when returning from the grave to a lonely home?