The picturesque pocket companion, and visitor's guide, through Mount Auburn

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[218] more, what is there in my dust, that it should be thus jealously guarded? Is it lovely now in the eyes of those who may have once loved me? Will my children, or the children of my children, visit my vaulted chamber? They may, indeed, summon the courage to descend into my still abode, and gaze by torch-light upon the black and mouldering visage, which, not their memory, but my escutcheon, not their love, but their pride, may tell them is the face of their father; and this may eloquently remind them how soon the builder of the house of death must take up his abode in it; how soon the dust that we have, must mingle with the dust that we are; but still there is a feeling of horror in the atmosphere of the tomb, which chills all that is affectionate and tender in the emotions that lead them into it, and is anything but favorable to the moral uses to which the living may convert the dwellings of the dead; uses that will be secured by every daughter of affliction, of whom it may be said, as it was said of the sorrowing Mary, “She goeth unto the grave to weep there.” Yes; though all whom I have loved or venerated sleep within its walls, I retreat from the tomb, the moment that I can do it without impiety, or even with decency. But I am differently affected when, with the rising sun, or by the light of the melancholy moon, I go alone to my mother's grave. There I love to linger; and, while there, I hear the wind sigh over one who often sighed for me. I breathe an air refreshed by the grass that draws its strength from the bosom from which I drew mine; and, in the drops of dew that tremble upon it, I see the tears that so often bedewed her eyes as she