A Voice From Mount Auburn

by Hannah Flagg Gould

A voice from Mount Auburn! a voice! -- and it said,
Ye have chosen me out as a home for your dead;
From the bustle of life ye have rendered me free;
My earth ye have hallowed -- henceforth I shall be
A garden of graves, where your loved ones shall rest!
O, who will be first to repose on my breast?

I now must be peopled from life's busy sphere;
Ye may roam, but the end of your journey is here.
I shall call! I shall call! and the many will come
From the heart of your crowds to so peaceful a home;
The great and the good, and the young and the old,
In death's dreamless slumbers, my mansions will hold.

To me shall the child his loved parent resign;
And, mother, the babe at thy breast must be mine!
The brother and sister for me are to part,
And the lover to break from each tie of the heart.
I shall rival the bridegroom and take from his side,
To sleep in my bosom, his beautiful bride.

And sweetly secure from all pain they shall lie,
Where the dews gently fall and the streams ripple by;
While the birds sing their hymns, amid air-harps, that sound
Through the boughs of the forest-trees whispering around.
And flowers, bright as Eden's, at morning shall spread,
And at eve drop their leaves o'er the slumberer's bed!

But this is all earthly! While thus ye enclose
A spot where your ashes in peace may repose --
Where the living may come and commune with the dead,
With God and his soul, and with reverence tread
On the sod, which he soon may be sleeping below, --
Have ye chosen the home where the spirit shall go?

Shall it dwell where the gardens of Paradise bloom,
And flowers are not opening to die on the tomb?
With the song of an angel, a vesture of light,
Shall it live in a world free from shadow and blight;
Where the waters are pure, from a fount never sealed,
And the secrets of heaven are in glory revealed?

A day hastens on, -- and an arm shall then break
The bars of the tomb -- the dread trump shall awake
The dead from their sleep in the earth and the sea,
And, 'Render up thine!' shall be sounded to me!
Prepare for that hour, that my people may stand,
Unawed by the scene, at the Judge's right hand!