The burial-ground where Boake lies is situated in an elevated part of North Sydney, some half-hour's journey from the city proper. It is a small enclosure, thickly studded with the grotesque monuments conventionally associated with grief. Here and there a poorer grave, adorned with shells and coloured pebbles, more impresses the stranger: it is like the rudimentary art of a bower-bird, yet so pitifully earnest. Near the western boundary lies a narrow plot with plain stone kerbing, and this inscription on a marble slab—
26TH MARCH, 1866
BARCROFT HENRY BOAKE
2ND MAY, 1892
And one reflects on the world of impotent potentialities that died with the baffled idealist beneath.
It is no wonder that the Earth
Heaps shining Spring on Spring;
That flowers bud in tender birth,
And ever new birds sing:
This is the harvest-home of woe
From buried ecstasies below.
A mother's hands let flowers fall
On little graves she loved:
The Earth, who loves and mothers all,
With the same impulse moved,
Doth sorrowfully every year
Strew flowers above her children dear.
