Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 2).djvu/16

This page has been validated.
8
TALES OF MY LANDLORD.

ground and overgrown with moss. No newly-erected tomb disturbs the sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and no rank-springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection, that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkles the sod, and the hare-bell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the dew of Heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degrading or disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are before us; but they are softened and deprived of their horror by our distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection that they have once been what we now are, and that, as their reliques are now identified with their mother earth, ours shall, at some future period, undergo the same transformation.