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Title: In A Cemetery
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
When Autumn's melancholy robes the land
With silence, and sad fadings mystical
Of other years move thro' the mellow fields,
I turn unto this meadow of the dead,
Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees,
And wonder if my resting shall be dug
Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway
Of yonder cypress--lair of winds that rove
As Valkyries sent from Valhalla's court
In search of worthy slain.
And sundry times with questioning I tease
The entombed of their estate--seeking to know
Whether 'tis sweeter in the grave to feel
The oblivion of Nature's silent flow,
Or here to wander wistful o'er her face.
Whether the harvesting of pain and joy
Which men call Life ends so, or whether death
Pours the warm chrism of Immortality
Into each human heart whose glow is spent.
And oft the Silence hears me. For a voice
Of sighing wind may answer, or a gaze,
Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face.
Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold,
That ebb along the west, revealings wing
And tremble, like ethereal swift tongues
Unskilled of human speech, about my heart--
Till youth, age, death, even earth's all, it seems,
Are but brave moments wakened in that Soul,
To whom infinities are as a span,
Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun,
And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds
Into the ceaseless surging of the sea....
Then twilight hours lead back my wandered spirit
From out the wilderness of mystery
Whence none may find a path to the Unknown,
And chastened to content I turn me home.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: In A Cemetery
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