Poems (Hoffman)/The Forgotten Grave

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE

Beside a lonely and neglected grave
I paused and watched the tangled grasses wave
  Mournfully to and fro;
A rude, unlettered slab still strove to keep
Its lonely vigil o'er the grass-grown heap
Where bereaved love had wept and ceased to weep,
  Long years ago.

The lonely pines wailed forth a plaintive dirge,
Like the low moaning of the ocean surge
  Through hollow caves,
Till with an inner consciousness, I heard
A voice, that through the moaning branches stirred
With the weird melody in every word
  Of restless waves.

"I am forgotten, summers bloom and die
And careless strangers wander heedless by
  My lonely tomb;
But long, long years my pulseless heart has slept
Since love above its moldering ashes wept,
And where the myrtle's graceful garlands crept
  Rude thistles bloom.

"I am forgotten, yonder marble pile,
Where through the golden days tall lilies smile
  And jasmines cling,
Is decked anew each day with loving care
While sorrow kneels in tearful anguish there
And love bestows in silent, mute despair
  Her offering.

"I am forgotten, not a tear doth fall,
Memory no more my image shall recall
  Or mourn my doom;
Nature's impartial hand alone doth strew
My silent bed with tears of crystal dew
And sunbeams slanting rifted cloud-drifts through
  Deck my lone tomb.

"I am forgotten, fragile flowers of yore,
Choked by the weeds, gave the brief conflict o'er,
  Nor left a trace;
Farther each year my tidal wave recedes
From memory's shore, but no one heeds
Or calls to mind my long-forgotten deeds,
  Lost form or face.

"I am forgotten, yet from my still bed
I hear the names of the illustrious dead
  In deathless song;
Often these eyes on honor's scroll have gazed
Where deathless eulogies triumphant blazed,
Alas! to pass unhonored and unpraised
  From out the throng.

"I am forgotten, Fate's austere decree
Marked out for mine that dreaded destiny
  To be forgot;
My little day of hope and fear is done,
I lie unnoticed now from sun to sun _
And wail from thy lone depths, oblivion,
  Remembered not."

Among the pines the last wild wail was lost,
But still the wind their moaning branches tossed
  Against the sky;
When in my heart a slumbering voice awoke,
And, though no sound the solemn stillness broke,
From out my inner consciousness it spoke
  And made reply:

"O lonely pines, chant your sad dirge no more,
O melancholy voice, no more deplore
  Thy common lot;
I stand above the earth, below the sky,
Below the angel choirs that sing on high,
Above the unknown dead whose ashes lie
  By man forgot.

"There is a love that hath its vigil kept;
There is a power, an eye that hath not slept
  Above thy dearth;
Mortal, whate'er thy long-lost form may be,
In the vast archives of eternity
Still lives above frail human memory
  Thy name, thy worth."