Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Laurel Hill
By Sallie Bridges
W
I passed an hour afar from worldly sound,
Where earthly care no longer Toil enslaves,
Where silence only, and Death’s types, abound.
The waving trees that shadowed sculptured stone,
The unknown names of those who mouldered there,
Subdued my soul like music’s solemn tone.
Above the buried dust so loved in life;
Where fragrant flowers, nursed by Sorrow’s tears,
Adorn the sod where rests a child or wife;
The unrecorded mound wherein may sleep
Some nameless waif, whose unremembered lot
Found naught to hope and left no friend to weep.
How many brains that throbbed with feverish thought,
How many wordless yearnings for the great,
Have found beyond this bourn the goal they sought!
What glowing visions, and what noble worth,
Have shone unvalued, then dropped back once more
Like unset jewels into mines of earth!
Proclaim the virtues of the flattered dead:
How oft an epitaph exalts a heart
Whose deeds no lustre on its lifetime shed!
A pathway winds, by pilgrim homage worn,
Where generous Love and Friendship’s tasteful aid
Have shrined the relics whose repose they mourn.
The unpolished block of virgin marble stands,
And forms the massive but unmodelled base
Where chiselled urn admiring praise commands.
Till Time to Labor’s work perfection brings,
And kindred souls, fulfilling Nature’s thought,
Undying laurels carve where ivy clings.
The stringless lyre leaning on thy grave!
Death early loosed thy spirit’s “silver chords,”
And stilled the music that thy being gave.
Than such a tribute for an honored tomb,
Where tears of grief bedew the cherished name,
And glory spreads her bays of fadeless bloom!