Poems (Howard)/The Old Burying Ground

by Hattie Howard

The Old Burying Ground.

O an old, old place it is,
Landmark of the centuries!
 Damp with mold, and dark with shade
 As secluded cloisters where,
Screened by stately colonnade,
Holy monks devotions paid;
 Or upon mosaics bare
 Vestal virgins knelt in prayer.

Hidden in the very heart
Of the busy bustling mart,
 Where Life's ever-surging tide,
 Restless as the mighty sea,
Scarce its ripples doth divide;
Save perchance when one aside
 Turns from curiosity,
 Some ancestral tomb to see.

Oldest habitant knows not
First when this sequestered spot
 Broken by the sexton's spade
 Place of sepulture became;
Knoweth not if man or maid
In its primal cell was laid—
 So, in Death, dissolveth fame
 And the prestige of a name.

Under those columnar trees
May not aborigines,
 Sachems of their dusky clan,
 Pow-wow counselors, have let
Hatred of the pale-faced man
Circumvent all peaceful plan—
 Or their malice to forget
 Smoked the fragrant calumet?

Native traders may have come
Bartering wampum-shells for rum—
 Or in lieu of ready cash
 Tendered baneful nicotine;
Drinking from the calabash
Fire-water, making rash
 Promises that sequel-seen,
 Proved them treacherous and mean.

Here our sires beneath the sod—
Blest reposure!—"rest in God";
 So we read upon the stones
 Crumbling, leaning out of place,
Moldering like sepulchered bones,
Tottering like terrestrial thrones,
 While the saints whose names we trace
 Stand before the Father's face.