Poems (Hoffman)/The Tomb of Man
THE TOMB OF MAN
What is your pageantry, O earth! And what your wealth, O sea!What is your grandeur, spangled heavens, Upheld in majesty?
Resplendent jewels flash and gleam On earth's triumphant breast,But midst her brightest galaxies Man goeth to his rest.
Down in the depths, the coral reefs Shine through the glistening wave;But midst the gardens of the deep The mortal makes his grave.
Yon heavens in seas of azure lie, And continents of cloud,They wrap our frail humanity In one vast burial shroud.
Beauty and glory vie to claim Earth's fruitage and her bloom,To wreathe in posthumous designs The universal tomb.
They gather up the sea's rare pearls And strew them o'er her bed,They chant with all her troubled waves The dirges of her dead.
They visit on their starry wings The heaven's celestial spheres,And from the precincts of the clouds They shed the mourner's tears.
Yet shall earth see her treasures raised From out her moldering sod,Yet shall the sea behold her waves Yield up their spoil to God.
Yet shall yon heavens, now looking down On mortal blight and ban,See immortality come forth From the great tomb of man.