Archibald Lampman (1861–1899)

HERE the dead sleep—the quiet dead. No sound

Disturbs them ever, and no storm dismays.

Winter mid snow caresses the tired ground,

And the wind roars about the woodland ways.

Springtime and summer and red autumn pass,

With leaf and bloom and pipe of wind and bird,

And the old earth puts forth her tender grass,

By them unfelt, unheeded and unheard.

Our centuries to them are but as strokes

In the dim gamut of some far-off chime.

Unaltering rest their perfect being cloaks—

A thing too vast to hear or feel or see—

Children of Silence and Eternity,

They know no season but the end of time.