Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MOUNTAIN GRAVEYARD, by DUBOSE HEYWARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MOUNTAIN GRAVEYARD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: High on the mountain where the storm-heads are
Last Line: And carry beauty with them when they die.
Subject(s): Cemeteries; Graveyards


High on the mountain where the storm-heads are,
Lying where all may see, there is a place
As hideous and shocking as a scar
That mars the beauty of a well-loved face.
Infinitely drear, and raw, and nude,
It waits and listens in the solitude.

There is no friendly tree in all that square
Of scattered stones and arid, troubled clay.
Bleak as the creed of those who journey there,
Hard as the code by which they lived their day,
It gives them all they ask of it -- its best;
No beauty and no softness -- only rest.

But oh, the pity of it all is this:
They lived with beauty and their eyes were blind.
Dreaming of far strong joys, they came to miss
Those that were near. So at the last we find
No tenderness of blossom, but instead
Mute emblems of the longings of the dead.

These rain-bleached sea-shells in an ordered row
Tell of an ocean that they never knew
Except in dreams which, through the ebb and flow
Of years, set seaward as the torrents do.
Always they planned to follow, knowing deep
Within their hearts that dreams are but for sleep.

And see these tawdry bits of broken glass
Which speak the foreign glories of the town --
The crowds, the lights; these too are dreams that pass
Here where the hemming walls of rock look down,
And clasp their children fast within their keep
Until they cradle them at last to sleep.

Yet all the while if they could only know
The beauty that is theirs to breathe and touch --
The whisper of the dawn across the snow,
The vast low-drifting clouds that love them much --
Oh, they could call their dreams home down the sky,
And carry beauty with them when they die.





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