Читать книгу The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 487, April 30, 1831 - Various - Страница 4

Why am I here?—Thou hast not need of me,

Home of the rotting and the rotten dead—

For thou art cumber’d to satiety,

And wilt be cumber’d—ay, when I am fled!

Why stand I here, the living among tombs?

Answer, all ye who own a grassy bed,

Answer your dooms.

Thou, massy stone! over whose heart art thou?

The lord who govern’d yonder giant place,

And ruled a thousand vassals at his bow.

Alack! how narrow and how small a space

Of what was human vanity and show

Serves for the maggot, when ’tis his to chase

The greatest and the latest of his race.

One of Earth’s dear ones, of a noble birth,

Slumbers e’en here; of such supernal charms,

That but to smile was to awaken mirth,

And for that smile set loving fools in arms.

The grave ill balances such living worth,

For here the worm his richest pasture farms,

Unconscious of his harms.

Yon grassy sod, that scarcely seems a grave,

Deck’d with the daisy, and each lowly flower,

Time leaves no stone, recording of the knave,

Whether of humble, or of lordly power:

Fame says he was a bard—Fame did not save

His name beyond the living of his hour—

A luckless dower.

’Tis strange to see how equally we die,

Though equal honour be unknown to light,

The lord, the lady of distinction high,

And he, the bard, who sang their noble might,

Sink into death alike and peacefully;

Though some may want the marble’s honour’d site,

Yet earth holds all that earthliness did slight.