Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending,--the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time.
Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.