I sought the churchyard where the lifeless lie,
And envied them, they rest so peacefully.
"No wretch comes here, at dead of night." I said,
"To drag the weary from his hard-earn'd bed;
No schoolboys here with mournful relics play,
And kick the 'dome of thought' o'er common clay;
No city cur snarls here o'er dead men's bones;
No sordid fiend removes memorial stones.
The dead have here what to the dead belongs,
Though legislation makes not laws, but wrongs."
I sought a letter'd stone, on which my tears
Had fall'n like thunder-rain, in other years,
My mother's grave I sought, in my despair,
But found it not! our grave-stone was not there!
No we were fallen men, mere workhouse slaves,
And how could fallen men have names or graves?
I thought of sorrow in the wilderness,
And death in solitude, and pitiless
Interment in the tiger's hideous maw:
I pray'd, and, praying, turn'd from all I saw;
My prayers were curses! But the sexton came;
How my heart yearn'd to name my Hannah's name!
White was his hair, for full of days was he,
And walk'd o'er tombstones, like their history.
With well feign'd carelessness I rais'd a spade,
Left near a grave, which seem'd but newly made,
And ask'd who slept below? "You knew him well,"
The old man answer'd, "Sir, his name was Bell.
He had a sister--she, alas! is gone,
Body and soul. Sir! for she married one