Poems (Hoffman)/The Grave of the Suicide
THE GRAVE OF THE SUICIDE
Bring no fair flowers to deck his tombThey only mock its rayless gloom,No virgin lilies sacrifice,No pansies with their pleading eyes,No royal roses bright and braveCondemn to deck a coward's grave.Go where the pure and lovely sleepWhere holy thoughts like mosses creepAnd sacred memories gather 'roundTo glorify the hallowed ground.Go where the weary soldier rests,Where muffled drums in fearless breastsThat beat their march to Honor's graveThrough ardor's flame and duty's waveNow lie (fulfilled their latest trust)And mingled with their country's dust.Go deck the graves where'er they areThat hold the hero-hosts of war,Not they alone who dared to dieFor right, or home, or libertyBut unto those just honor giveWho midst life's conflict dared to live,Who faced the armies of despairAnd welcomed death, an angel there;Yet rather chose through years of woeThe torturing rack of life to knowThan with a feeble human handDestroy the temple God has plannedWith hope to find the peace they craveIn an ignoble coward's grave.Who lived, when death were easier far,Are heroes in life's common war.Bring fairest flowers to deck the spotThat chronicles their grief forgot. Your virgin lilies sacrifice,Your pansies with their pleading eyes,Your royal roses bright and braveAnoint to deck a hero's grave;But they who faced a petty foeNor stayed to plan its overthrow,While others fearless turned to wieldTheir arms on many a fiery field,These slunk from out the heedless crowdAnd buttoning on their gory shroudWhile wrong, the ranks of right despoiledLay down to sleep when others toiled.Cowards, weak cowards, let them lieUnnoticed 'neath their natal sky,The onward march of triumph treadsWith scorn the grasses o'er their heads;;Erect no pedestal of prideO'er the ignoble suicide.No virgin lilies sacrifice,No pansies with their pleading eyes,No royal roses bright and braveCondemn to deck a coward's grave.No trailing myrtle vainly placeTo cover O'er a life's disgrace;Weeds, coarsest weeds, should veil the moundWith its profaned, unhallowed ground,Fit symbol they of low desiresOf hearts consumed by fiendish fires,Of minds distorted, souls that growTo dwarfish statures base and low;And if perchance a wild flower springsOr bird, in passing, stops and singsWhere only thistles, grass and weedsSpring up each year to drop their seeds,'Tis like a breath of Mercy's prayerMidst changeless justice bleak and bare. He perpetrates a complex crimeWho dares to die before his time.His country called for noble menBut where was he, the traitor, then?Life's field was broad, its workers fewYet he had nothing left to do,Truth had a thousand pearls to giveAnd he had naught for which to live.Life is so short, life's work so greatBut the tired idler could not waitAnd plotted out his coward's crimeWith hope to rest before his time.Who, hath the temple overthrownTo which God holds the key alone,His is the thief's eternal doom,His is the prison's hopeless gloom,He thinks to sleep, ah, vain his thought!In their lone cells they slumber not;Like culprits in their dungeon bedThey only wait the sentence dread;His is the murderer's awful fate,His grave shall be his prison gateFrom whence again with faltering breathHe goeth trembling to his deathUpon his hands the murderer's stainAnd on his brow the mark of Cain;Bring no fair flowers to deck his tombThey only mock its rayless gloom.