“Well, us have had fun, haven’t us, George?” said the harvest moon. He received no answer as we passed out of “The Four Elms,” for all but he had left the world where words are spoken and opinions held; and the hazel lane seemed to be a temple of the mysterious elements that make the harvest and the apple crop and the glory of the hops.
Walking in a country churchyard it is often hard to think of it as a place of death. The children play among the tombs. At Easter the village girls bring hither primroses from the woods, planting some, scattering others. Labourers meet and talk there, for the footpaths all converge towards the church. Lovers walk there. The gravedigger is indeed often busy there, but you may go many times and not find him at a grave, and it is seldom but he is planting flowers, pruning bushes, or mowing grass. On the tombs themselves, in epitaph or in lack of epitaph, is written the corporate wisdom of the village, its philosophy and its history half transmuted into poetry. Fancy can never be quiet as the eye passes from Mary to Rebecca, from John to David, whose record let no one interpret untenderly. I have seen on an afternoon many a novel that shall never be written save as it is written here, deep without gloom, bitter without scandal, on those tablets that have kept their legends too long to be altogether fair. Even the harshest brevity has its fitness, as if it were penned by the right hand of Fate. And here, as in some other matters, we have made an insignificant advance upon our ancestors. The chief records of early races are their tombs. We know not so much that they lived as that they are dead. We guess at their lives from their dead bones. A tool, a weapon, a trinket, a favourite beast, is buried with them, conferring a life in death. In some ancient graves the bodies are found in a sitting posture, and if conjecture be just, we may suppose that the dead man once slept thus and dreamed, daring not to lie down, because no clothes kept off the frost or rain. So the endeavour to provide for an after life by utensils and food has not been wholly in vain. But “Tombs,” said the poet, “have their life and death.” The headstone is heir to the deceased and out in the world seeks a fortune, which is commonly bad. The fates of tombs have seldom been traced. The history of the epitaph has never been written. Thus is much common philosophy hidden away. Probably no body of literature could be found that is more fertile in homely truth and fancy. But collections of epitaphs either have no plan, or are intended to show only what is curious, brilliant, or very old.