Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HOMES AND GRAVES, by THOMAS KIBBLE HERVEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HOMES AND GRAVES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: How beautiful a world were ours
Last Line: Like childhood's -- it hath not a grave!
Subject(s): Graves; Tombs; Tombstones


How beautiful a world were ours,
But for the pale and shadowy One
That treadeth on its pleasant flowers,
And stalketh in its sun!
Glad childhood needs the lore of time
To show the phantom overhead;
But where the breast, before its prime,
That carrieth not its dead --
The moon that looketh on whose home
In all its circuit sees no tomb?

It was an ancient tyrant's thought,
To link the living with the dead;
Some secret of his soul had taught
That lesson dark and dread;
And, oh! we bear about us still
The dreary moral of his art --
Some form that lieth, pale and chill,
Upon each living heart,
Tied to the memory, till a wave
Shall lay them in one common grave!

To boyhood hope -- to manhood fears!
Alas! alas! that each bright home
Should be a nursing-place of tears,
A cradle for the tomb!
If childhood seeth all things loved
Where home's unshadowy shadows wave,
The old man's treasure hath removed --
He looketh to the grave! --
For grave and home lie sadly blent,
Wherever spreads yon firmament.

A few short years -- and then, the boy
Shall miss, beside the household hearth,
Some treasure from his store of joy,
To find it not on earth;
A shade within its sadden'd walls
Shall sit, in some beloved's room,
And one dear name, he vainly calls,
Be written on a tomb --
And he have learnt, from all beneath,
His first, dread, bitter taste of death!

And years glide on, till manhood's come;
And where the young, glad faces were,
Perchance the once bright, happy home
Hath many a vacant chair:
A darkness, from the churchyard shed,
Hath fall'n on each familiar room,
And much of all home's light hath fled
To smoulder in the tomb --
And household gifts that memory saves
But help to count the household graves.

Then, homes and graves the heart divide,
As they divide the outer world;
But drearier days must yet betide,
Ere sorrow's wings be furl'd;
When more within the churchyard lie
Than sit and sadly smile at home.
Till home, unto the old man's eye,
Itself appears a tomb;
And his tired spirit asks the grave
For all the home it longs to have!

It shall be so -- it shall be so!
Go bravely trusting -- trusting on;
Bear up a few short years -- and, lo!
The grave and home are one! --
And then, the bright ones gone before
Within another, happier home,
And waiting, fonder than before,
Until the old man come --
A home where but the life-trees wave;
Like childhood's -- it hath not a grave!





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