page: 221
THE CATHEDRAL TOMBS.
“Post tempestatem tranquillitas.”
Epitaph in Ely Cathedral.
- THEY lie, with upraised hands, and feet
- Stretched like dead feet that walk no more,
- And stony masks oft human sweet,
- As if the olden look each wore,
- Familiar curves of lip and eye,
- Were wrought by some fond memory.
- All waiting: the new‐coffined dead,
- The handful of mere dust that lies
- Sarcophagused in stone and lead
- Under the weight of centuries:
- Knight, cardinal, bishop, abbess mild,
- With last week’s buried year‐old child.
- After the tempest cometh peace,
- After long travail sweet repose;
- These folded palms, these feet that cease
- From any motion, are but shows
- Of—what? What rest? How rest they? Where?
- The generations naught declare.
- Dark grave, unto whose brink we come,
- Drawn nearer by all nights and days;
- Each after each, thy solemn gloom
- We pierce with momentary gaze,
- Then go, unwilling or content,
- The way that all our fathers went.
- Is there no voice or guiding hand
- Arising from the awful void,
- To say, “Fear not the silent land;
- Would He make aught to be destroyed?
- Would He? or can He? What know we
- Of Him who is Infinity?
- Strong Love, which taught us human love,
- Helped us to follow through all spheres
- Some soul that did sweet dead lips move,
- Lived in dear eyes in smiles and tears,
- Love—once so near our flesh allied,
- That “Jesus wept” when Lazarus died;—
- Eagle‐eyed Faith that can see God,
- In worlds without and heart within;
- In sorrow by the smart o’ the rod,
- In guilt by the anguish of the sin;
- In everything pure, holy, fair,
- God saying to man’s soul, “I am there”;—
- These only, twin‐archangels, stand
- Above the abyss of common doom,
- These only stretch the tender hand
- To us descending to the tomb,
- Thus making it a bed of rest
- With spices and with odors drest.
- So, like one weary and worn, who sinks
- To sleep beneath long faithful eyes,
- Who asks no word of love, but drinks
- The silence which is paradise—
- We only cry—“Keep angelward,
- And give us good rest, O good Lord!”
