Ch. 4 - Grandmother - Page 2

roses, and the nightingale sang over it, and the
organ in the church played the finest psalms that were in the book
under the dead one's head. And the moon shone straight down on the
grave--but the dead was not there: every child could go quietly in the
night-time and pluck a rose there by the churchyard-wall. The dead
know more than all we living know--the dead know the awe we should
feel at something so strange as their coming to us. The dead are
better than us all, and therefore they do not come.

There is earth over the coffin, there is earth within it; the
psalm-book with its leaves is dust the rose with all its recollections
has gone to dust. But above it bloom new roses, above is sings the
nightingale, and the organ plays:--we think of the old grandmother
with the mild, eternally young eyes. Eyes can never die! Ours shall
once again see her young, and beautiful, as when she for the first
time kissed the fresh red rose which is now dust in the grave.