The Innumerable Caravan

I once had a database on RootsWeb WorldConnect titled Innumerable Caravan.  It's no longer there but I wanted to post this reason for choosing that title for my family records.

This version (there are others) is from my copy of The Riverside Literature Series: Sella, Thanatopsis and Other Poems by William Cullen Bryant, with notes and a biographical sketch; published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, at the Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1892.


William Cullen Bryant
1794-1878 
  
THANATOPSIS

Written in the poet's eighteenth year. 
  
To him who in the love of Nature holds   
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks   
A various language; for his gayer hours   
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile   
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides           
Into his darker musings, with a mild   
And healing sympathy, that steals away   
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts   
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight   
Over thy spirit, and sad images    
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,   
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,   
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; -   
Go forth under the open sky, and list   
To Nature's teachings, while from all around -    
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air -   
Comes a still voice -

     Yet a few days, and thee   
The all-beholding sun shall see no more   
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,   
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,    
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist   
Thy image.   Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim   
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,   
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up   
Thine individual being, shalt thou go    
To mix forever with the elements;   
To be a brother to the insensible rock,   
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain   
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak   
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.    

   Yet not to thine eternal resting-place   
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish   
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down   
With patriarchs of the infant world, - with kings,   
The powerful of the earth, - the wise, the good,    
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,   
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills   
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales   
Stretching in pensive quietness between;   
The venerable woods - rivers that move    
In majesty, and the complaining brooks   
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,   
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, -   
Are but the solemn decorations all   
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,    
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,   
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,   
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread   
The globe are but a handful to the tribes   
That slumber in its bosom.-Take the wings    
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,   
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods   
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,   
Save his own dashings,-yet the dead are there:   
And millions in those solitudes, since first    
The flight of years began, have laid them down   
In their last sleep - the dead reign there alone.   
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw   
In silence from the living, and no friend   
Take note of thy departure?  All that breathe    
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh   
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care   
Plod on, and each one as before will chase   
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave   
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come    
And make their bed with thee. As the long train   
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,   
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes   
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,   
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man -    
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side   
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.   
   
  So live, that when thy summons comes to join   
The innumerable caravan which moves   
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take    
His chamber in the silent halls of death,   
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,   
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed   
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave   
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch    
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.