that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing
hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused
the old wounds to bleed afresh.

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass;
who standing among flowers can say--here, here lies my beloved;
ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these.
What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover
no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions!
What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines
that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections
to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave.
As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;
why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales,
though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands! how it is
that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix
so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him,
if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth;
why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals;
in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance,
yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago;
how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we
nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss;
why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but
the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city.
All these things are not without their meanings.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from