Plant it with laurels, sprinkle it with lilies, set it upon yonder dewy hill Midst holy prayers, and generous griefs, and consecrating blessings: Let Sophocles sleep among his ivy, green perennial garlands, Let olives shade their Virgil, and roses bloom above Corinne; To his foster-mother, Ocean, entrust the mariner in hope; The warrior's spirit, let it rise on high from the flaming fragrant pyre. But heap not coffins and corruption to infect the mass of living, Nor steal from odious realities the charitable poetry of Death: It is wise to gild uncomeliness, it is wise to mask necessity, It is wise from cheerful sights and sounds to draw their gentle uses: Hide the facts, the bitter facts, the foul, and fearful facts, Tend the body well in hope, this were praise and wisdom: But to plunge in gloom the parting soul, that hath loved its clay tenement so long, This were vanity and folly, the counsel of moroseness and despair. Not thus, the Scythian of old time welcomed Death with songs; Not thus, the shrewd Egyptian decorated Death with braveries; Not thus, on his funeral tower sleepeth the sun-worshipping Parsee; Not thus, the Moslem saint lieth in his arabesque mausoleum; Not thus, the wild red Indian, hunter of the far Missouri, In flowering trees hath nested up his forest-loving ancestry; Not thus, the Switzer mountaineer scattereth ribboned garlands About the rustic cross that halloweth the bed of his beloved; Not thus, the village maiden wisheth she may die in spring, With store of violets and cowslips to be sprinkled on her snow-white shroud; Not thus, the dying poet asketh a cheerful grave,-- Lay him in the sunshine, friends, nor sorrow that a Christian hath departed!