A Ballad of an Old Churchyard
THEIR narrow houses lie a-row,
Crumbling and silent at my feet:
The sound floats to me from below
Of laughing voices in the street.
They care no more to clothe or eat,
They take no heed when tempests blow,
Safe from all sorrow, all deceit,
These are the Dead of Long Ago!
Of their past lives I cannot know,
Or if their days were sad or sweet,
And yet they once were glad, I trow,
With laughing voices in the street.
For them the years were full and fleet;
Seems this world now an empty show?
Or do they rest in calm complete,
The Dead of Very Long Ago?
Some lives were checked in fullest flow,
And some bore all the stress and heat,
And some were called in youth's first glow
From laughing voices in the street.
Yet the end came, as it was meet,
The selfsame end for friend and foe,
Nor wrath, nor love makes dead hearts beat;
These are the Dead of Long Ago!
Envoy.
Oh, ye who join with singing sweet
The laughing voices in the street!
How ye forget them, here laid low,
The Dead of very Long Ago!