Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/263

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FORTY YEARS SINCE.
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place, in which she has sat, speaks the name of Oriana. I go to it, but she is not there."

The clergyman spoke kind words of comfort to them, as to his brethren; andere he departed, made arrangements for the funeral solemnities, that the bones of the stranger might rest in consecrated earth. Two days elapsed, and the scene changed to the burial ground of the religious community, to which he ministered. An open grave was seen there, and a few forms flitting among the Shades which environed the spot, as if watching for some funeral train. The passing-bell, echoing from rock to rock, fell with its solemn, measured sound upon their ear, as they roved amid the mouldering remains of their fellow creatures. There were here but few monuments, and none whose splendour could attract the attention of the traveller. It might seem as if those, who here slumbered, had realized the fallacy of those arts, by which man strives to adhere to the remembrance of his kind.

Perhaps, among this group, were some recent mourners, who felt their wounds bleed afresh at the sight of an open grave. Perhaps some parent might there be seen, bowing in agony over the newly covered bed of his child; some daughter, kneeling to kiss the green turf upon the breast of her mother; some lover, weeping amid the ruins of his hope, or casting an unopened rose bud on the grave of her who had perished in beauty. Alas! how many varieties of grief had that narrow spot witnessed, since it cast a heavy mantle over the head of its first ten-