Poems (Hoffman)/The Seaside Cemetery
THE SEASIDE CEMETERY
This is no silent city of the dead, No soundless crypt;No charnel-house (whence light and song have fled) For gloom equipped.No hidden, darksome, life-deserted spot Of bloom bereft.
Where silent desolation, changing not, Alone is left.A city, looking from its sloping hill Toward the sea;A picture, blooming fresh and lovely In memory.Here droop bright fuchsias in a glowing hedge Of brightness set,And blue lobelias fringe the border's edge With dewdrops wet;While pelargoniums, with deep color stained Make glad the ground;And the green ivy clambers, unrestrained O'er slab and mound,And queenly roses and rich purple blooms In freshness glow,Dropping their fading petals on the tombs That sleep below.The white fogs hover o'er with silent wings, Like guardian hostsWhen early morn her misty mantle flings Along the coasts; And the glad sunbeams fall, like melted gold In shining pools;While the hot noontide's burning, brazen scroll The seabreeze cools;And over all a deep and mighty surge Forever swells,The wondrous ocean's ceaseless, solemn dirge Time never quells;As if the sea's great palpitating heart Remembered yet,The silent dwellers, as the years depart And friends forget.Were it not beautiful to slumber here Not all unsung;But chanted of by one forever near In Nature's tongue?Sleep, peaceful dwellers, by the lovely shore; Though life hath fled,The throbbing, solemn ocean nevermore Forgets the dead.