* * *

When, lost in thought, I roam beyond the city's bounds
And find myself within the public burial grounds,
The fashionable tombs behind the railing squatting,
Where the great capital's uncounted dead are rotting,
All huddled in a swamp, a crowding, teeming horde,
Like greedy guests that swarm about a beggar's board;
Officials' sepulchers, and merchants', too, all fizzles:
The clumsy products of inexpert, vulgar chisels,
Inscribed in prose and verse with virtues, service, rank,
Outlandish ornaments displayed on either flank;
A widow's fond lament for an old cuckold coffined;
The posts, their urns unscrewed by thieves, the earth that's softened
And slippery, where graves are gaping dark and wide
To welcome tenants who next day will move inside —
All this brings troubled thoughts; I feel my spirits fail me
As I survey the scene, and evil blues assail me.
One wants to spit and run!
But what calm pleasure lies —
When rural autumn sheds its peace from evening skies —
In seeing the churchyard, where, solemnly reposing
Among their ancestors, the country dead are dozing!
There, unadorned, the graves have ample elbowroom;
At midnight no pale thief creeps forth to rob the tomb;
The peasant sighs and says a prayer as he passes
The timeworn stones o'ergrown with yellowed moss and grasses;
No noseless angels soar, no blowsy Graces here,
No petty pyramids or idle urns appear;
But a broad oak above these dignified graves brooding
Bestirs its boughs in music. . . .