LINES ON A SKELETON

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 50.

LINES ON A SKELETON.

[Some forty years ago the following poem was found in the London Morning Chronicle. Every effort was vainly made to discover the author, even to the offering of a reward of fifty guineas. All that ever transpired was that the poem, in a fairly clerkly hand, was found near a skeleton of remarkable symmetry of form in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's Inn, London, and that the curator of the museum had sent them to the Morning Chronicle.]

BEHOLD this ruin! 'Twas a skull Once of ethereal spirit full. This narrow cell was life's retreat; This space was thought's mysterious seat. What beauteous visions filled this spot, What dreams of pleasure long forgot! Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear, Have left one trace of record here.

Beneath this moldering canopy Once showed the bright and busy eye; But start not at the dismal void— If social love that eye employed, If with no lawless fire it gleamed, But through the dews of kindness beamed, That eye may be forever bright When stars and sun are sunk in night.

Within this hollow cavern hung The ready, swift, and toneful tongue. If falsehood's honey it disdained, And when it could not praise was chained, If bold in virtue's cause it spoke, Yet gentle concord never broke, This silent tongue shall plead for thee When time unveils eternity.

Say, did these fingers delve the mine, Or with the envied rubies shine? To hew the rock or wear the gem Can little now avail to them. But if the page of truth they sought, Or comfort to the mourner brought, These hands a richer meed shall claim Than all that wait on wealth or fame.

Avails it, whether bare or shod, These feet the paths of duty trod? If from the bowers of ease they fled, To seek affliction's humble shed, If grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned, And home to virtue's cot returned, These feet with angels' wings shall vie, And tread the palace of the sky.