Friendship's Offering, or the Annual
Remembrancer: a Christmas Present, or
New Year's Gift, for 1825. L. Relfe.
The Suicide's Grave.
Look on this mound; the newly-turn'd-up earth
Has two or three green patches of wild flowers,
Pale in their slighted beauty; one white group
Of daisies, that, like the sweet gifts of hope,
Spring every where: methinks, it were a spot
Whereon the traveller would love to pause,
And the tir'd peasant rest him from his toil,—
So cool the ashen tree spreads its green cloud,
So beautiful the lanes that from it wind,
So rich the sweep of meadows it commands.
But no! all shun the place; some in vague fear,
And some in pity, some in pious awe:
It is the Suicide's unholy grave:
The one who sleeps here, had no humble prayer
Breath'd o'er the clay it hallow'd by its faith;—
Even in death, shunn'd by his fellow men!
In the small village which that first green lane
Leads to, in serpentines of sun and shade,
By hedges, fill'd with may and violets,
And scarlet strawberries and honey-suckle,
An old man dwelt; he had an only son,
The child, of his old age. Himself had led
A life of toil upon the ocean wave,
And came at length to spend his latter days,
In peace and quiet, ‘neath the straw-thatch'd roof
Which saw his birth.
