The Pleasures of June 79 



dressy girls come with their sweethearts and flirt be- 

 side the dead. But it is to no sorrowful tune that the 

 summer wind rustles the ivy on the church wall, and 

 the leaves of the great elm, and the foliage of the dark 

 yews that the sunshine forces out of mourning. The 

 flowers on a few well-tended graves blow happily as 

 in a garden, yet not more happily than the rank grass 

 that shoots lustily upwards and waves and nods over 

 the unheadstoned mounds, where are buried, says the 

 poet, not only the bodies of men, but withered hearts, 

 and crushed genius, and foiled ambition : the wild and 

 strong-winged birds that have beaten themselves to 

 death, against the prison bars of poverty. If such 

 things were not, the churchyard would not be so full 

 of interest. I could never feel that it is sad. It is 

 not death, but life, that is tragic ; and if in fancy I 

 conjure from these tombs the faces of their sleeping 

 tenants, it is not as troubled complaining ghosts they 

 come : though one at least I know who, albeit dowered 

 with full capacity for living, was not permitted so 

 much as to taste of life who, like an athlete debarred 

 from competition by lack of entrance money, was by 

 the sordid accident of want compelled to stand aside. 

 There is no active, sympathetic anxiety now to in- 

 terfere with the calm amusement of readjusting his 

 destiny. The dead are plastic stuff for the fancy to 

 work upon. 



It is more difficult to follow out any cheerful train 

 of thought on the hillside, even when the valley is 



