Poems (Denver)/The Forest Grave

by Mary Caroline Denver

THE FOREST GRAVE.

Thou green and waving forest!
 Amid thy lonely dells,
Amid thy thousand rugged trunks
 A voiceless tenant dwells.

A still, secluded mansion
 Is his who sleeps beneath,
"With grassy covering overhead,
 And flowing forest-wreath.

And lonely in its musings,
 With voice of melody,
The calm and shade-sequestered stream
 Is softly gliding by.

Beside the quiet sleeper
 It sadly floats along,
As if presiding stillness waked
 Its spirit into song.

Or does it speak of beauty,
 On the face of nature spread,
Or murmur thus in tones of praise
 The glory of the dead?

Speak of the silent dweller
 Thus low beside thee laid,
And thou, dark forest, tell of him—
 The tenant of thy shade!

To view thee in thy stillness,
 Vast, beautiful, sublime,
To seek thee, did he wander forth
 From habitable clime?

From the sunny home of childhood,
 Did he wander forth alone,
To perish in a distant land
 Unknowing and unknown?

Did no kind heart weep o'er him
 The burning tears of grief?
Did no fond bosom heave for one
 Whose noonday was so brief?

And if forlorn, forsaken,
 When life and being fled,
What kindly hand thus placed the turf
 Above the lonely dead?

The green grass, thin and waving,
 The dark earth, hard and cold,
Tell that one faithful heart was near
 To minister untold.

To bathe the throbbing temples,
 To watch the parting breath,
And when the spirit passed, to pay
 The last sad rites of death.

But who was this lone sleeper,
 This lowly, slumbering frame—
Does memory recall no deed
 To consecrate his name?

Is there no proud endeavor
 From oblivion's waters cast;
No burst of intellectual lire
 Snatched from the traceless past?

Thou cloud-enfolded forest,
 Thou hast no answering tone!
The same sad silence reigns around—
 Thy secret is thine own!

So rest, thou lonely sleeper,
 From life's weary tempest- wave,
The solitary tenant of
 A solitary grave!