A Walk in Greenwood
OTHER people hereabouts, when they wish to get away from brick and mortar, and feast their eyes on verdure and foliage, go to Central Park, or to its new rival, the Prospect Park, of Brooklyn; but, for some years past, my own favorite resort has been the beautiful and incomparable Greenwood, It has no rival in the world. “Nothing that I have ever seen in Europe compares with this,” said Newman Hall to me, as we stood on Sylvan Cliff, on a golden day of last October; and he added, “Nothing I have yet seen in America gives me such an impression of wealth, taste, and refinement as this exquisite spot.” Old Jeremy Taylor says that it is good to knock often at the gates of the grave; and, truly, there is no terror in death to one who only has to look forward to bewitching Greenwood as the resting-place of his body, and to Heaven as the dwelling of his ransomed soul.
Yesterday I went to Greenwood alone. How often, in times past, have I walked there with a pair of little feet tripping beside me, which now, alas! are laid under a mound of green turf and flowers. The night before the precious child departed, having wearied himself with play, he quaintly said, “My little footies are tired at both ends.” Ere twenty-four hours were past, the tired feet had ended life’s short journey, and were laid to the dreamless rest. Thousands and thousands of other little children are slumbering around him; for Greenwood is one vast nursery, in which cribs give place to little caskets and coffins, and no one is afraid to speak loud lest they wake up the silent sleepers. Over the dust of these sleeping treasures are hundreds of marbles which bear only such pet names as “Our Lucy.” or “Our Willie,” or “Sweet little Carrie, or “Our Darling.” Close beside the narrow bed, so dear to me, lie a pair of children in one spot, and on the tiny marble above them is carved this sweet verse: —
“Under the daisies two graves are made, Ujider the daisies our treasures are laid, Under the daisies? It cannot be thus; We are sure that in heaven they wait for us.”
What a celestial cheerfulness breathes in such words I How like to a guardian angel’s song I There are other inscriptions scattered through the cemetery which are equally redolent of Christian hope and immortality. For example, on a stately monument is written only the name of the dead, and on the other side of the granite shaft the simple, thrilling announcement, “The Lord is Risen I” If Christ be risen, then is the believer’s glorious resurrection made certain likewise. What a contrast between the above words of joyful faith and another tomb, which bears this fearfully startling verse: —
“There are no acts of pardon passed In the cold grave to which we haste; But darkness, death, and long despair Reign in eternal silence there.”
Awfully true as may be the utterance contained in these lines of Watts, yet I should not care to have it preached from my monument.
Several tombs bear the single line, Our
154 EMPTY CRIB.
Mother,^’’ No inscription in the whole city of the dead touched me so tenderly as the one word, “Good-night,” on the tomb of a young wife. Perhaps this was her last utterance as the twilight of the “valley” fell upon her advancing footsteps. Among many carved clusters of lilies, myrtles, and violets, we often discovered on the monuments of God’s departed children this flower, from the Holy Spirit’s own hand: “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” This is the amaranth which angels wreathe above the sainted dead. How fragrant it is with the love of Jesus; how dewy with precious promises; how it glitters in the light which falls from the sapphire walls of the New Jerusalem! Matchless line: that never grows old, and never stales its heavenly freshness! If there be any line which the “ministering spirits” chant above the sleeping dust of Christ’s blood-bought heirs of glory, it must be this one which the Spirit taught to the beloved John. Not as a dreary dirge do they chant it; not as a melancholy requiem: it is a jubilant paean of triumph over those who have come off more than conquerors, — whose achievements are complete, and for whom wait the “robes made white in the blood of the Lamb.”
In my stroll yesterday through Greenwood, I was again impressed with the fact that so few, even of the most eminent, sons of New York rest in New York’s most famous cemetery. Clinton, indeed, is there, buried beneath a pedestal which does not contain his name, only his colossal bronze statue. Dr. Bethune sleeps there among his beloved flock. Dr. Mitchell, the celebrated New-York chemist, lies there too; and, not far oflf, his illustrious namesake, the hero-astronomer, who fell asleep, with his sword by his side, at Port Royal. Soldiers from the “Empire City” are buried in nearly every avenue and shaded path, with devices of cannon or sword or knapsack or starry flag upon their monuments. But Fulton, the chief architect of our city’s material grandeur, lies elsewhere, Washington Irving, the most celebrated of her sons, has his sepulchre at the entrance of his own “Sleepy Hollow.” Alexander Hamilton, Marcy, Silas Wright, and Van Buren are buried among their kindred; the chivalrous Wadsworth sleeps in the valley of the Genesee; and glorious old John Brown among the rocks of North Elba. Greenwood surpasses all other cemeteries in loveliness of landscape, in variety and splendor of its marbles, and in entrancing views; but it is not a Westminster Abbey in its roll of illustrious dead.
Of all the outlooks in Greenwood, one of the finest is that from Battle Hill. New York, Brooklyn, the bay, and the forest of masts, are all beneath you in one superb panorama. One can imagine the departed spirits of the “merchant princes” looking down from this height upon the busy, roaring scene of their life-toils. What shall it profit them now, if, for yonder fleeting treasures of the bank or the warehouse, they bartered away their immortal souls?
To me, the most captivating view is from Sylvan Cliff, overlooking Sylvan Water. On that green brow stands a monument which bears the figure of Faith kneeling before a cross, and beneath it the world-known lines of Toplady: —
“Nothing in mj hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling!”
As I stood beside that graceful tablet yesterday, the light of an October sun threw its mellow radiance over the crimsoning foliage, and the green turf, and the sparkling water of the fountain which played in the vale beneath. In the distance was the placid bay, with one stately ship resting at anchor, — a beautiful emblem of a Christian soul whose voyage had ended in the peaceful repose of the “desired haven.” The sun went down into the purpling horizon as I stood there; a bird or two was twittering its evening song; the air was as silent as the unnumbered sleepers around me; and, turning toward the sacred spot where my precious dead is lying, I bade him, as of old. Good-night!