Chapter VI: A Mahommedan Graveyard

Within the wall their graves are still and white,
Their feet turned ever southward; all the dust
Is thick in moonlight, and the banyans thrust
Long roots into the glory of the night;
Hanging like dusky tresses overhead,
Where, by the highway’s side, lie Islam’s dead.

Who sighs, who prays one prayer as he perceives,
So near his passing foot, that township set
With crumbling slab and little minaret
Below the lattice of the banyan leaves?
Who knows one name in all that silent throng
Whose hands have ceased from work so long--so long?

Each heart round which eternal shadow sleeps
Has spent the hour that we have all to spend,
Has waited for the coming of the end,
And now, who thinks, who minds, who cares, who weeps?
Who tells us how he faced the figure grim?
’Tis words to us--it was the world to him.

How shall we nerve our hearts to bear that sight,
The long horizon of advancing dark,
That dread oblivion with no lamp nor spark
Of love’s remembrance to make soft the night?
What is there but the dull relief of tears
That weakness wrings from us throughout our years?

No, never that. Who stands and fights his pain
Can still endure. But unto him who lies
And seeks to ease him with his coward cries
Relief is not nor any rest again;
And who can tighten up the string anew
That gives beneath the straining of the screw?

O brothers! turn and look where courage stands
Serene and still with never-changing eye,
Courage to be forgot--to live--to die,
Stand up like men and clench your failing hands;
What man could dare to face the land unknown
With but a coward’s heart to call his own?

❦