Daily Globe

Unnumbered Graves.

Yon hillside with its shafts of gleaming white,
Bathed in the glory of the setting sun,
Holds many a grave where, hidden from our sight,
Some loved one sleeps, life's toils and labor done.

But there are graves above whose slumb'ring mold
No polished marble rears its stately head,
And where no fragrant flowers above unfold
To wake pity for the quiet dead.

These are the graves deep down within our hearts,
Where lie the hopes and dreams of early years,
Buried from sight; but signaled by such marks
As only can be made by blood and tears.

Some early love that crowned us in our youth,
And made life glorious for a short sweet hour,
Some cherished promise, robbed of strength and truth,
Crushed in the morning of its new-born power.

Here is the spot where memory has engraved
The form and face of one we called a friend,
But one for whose welfare we would e'en have braved
Censure and heartache to the bitter end.

But 'twas not wisely done, and so now we draw
Before the treachery of the smiling eyes
A heavy veil. The cold world, if it saw,
Would proffer pity in a thousand lies.

So life goes on. We lay the forms away,
Of things we loved unwisely and too well;
And in the lapse of years we learn to stay
The fretful chanting of their funeral knell.

We learn to smile before the smiling throng,
Although the adder's fangs be deeply set;
And join, perhaps, our voices in the song,
To soothe the pain we never can forget.

And thus we learn to envy the calm rest
Of those who sleep beneath the silent sod
Bound with life's galling chains, we know 'tis best
To bend our heads and pass beneath the rod

And when we see some mourners heavy clad
In robes of black, haggard, with tear-dimmed eye,
We know there lives would be more bright and glad
Could they but reason—it is life to die.

Mourn not the slumbering dead, but rather say,
Blessed are the sleepers.
Years may come and go;
Heads that are brown and gold may turn to gray;
But they are done with earth and tears and woe.

Somewhere, we know, beyond the world of stars,
They will at last have found sweet Lethe's stream,
Some time we'll meet them at God's judgment bar,
Where life is love, and love one long sweet dream.
—Ogden (Utah) Freeman.