As I went to and fro among the
graves, I saw some flowers set reverently before a recently erected
tomb, and drawing near, was almost startled to find they lay on the
grave a man seventy-two years old when he died. We are accustomed
to strew flowers only over the young, where love has been cut short
untimely, and great possibilities have been restrained by death.
We strew them there in token, that these possibilities, in some
deeper sense, shall yet be realised, and the touch of our dead
loves remain with us and guide us to the end. And yet there was
more significance, perhaps, and perhaps a greater consolation, in
this little nosegay on the grave of one who had died old. We are
apt to make so much of the tragedy of death, and think so little of
the enduring tragedy of some men's lives, that we see more to
lament for in a life cut off in the midst of usefulness and love,
than in one that miserably survives all love and usefulness, and
goes about the world the phantom of itself, without hope, or joy,
or any consolation. These flowers seemed not so much the token of
love that survived death, as of something yet more beautiful--of
love that had lived a man's life out to an end with him, and been
faithful and companionable, and not weary of loving, throughout all
these years.
The morning cleared a little, and the sky was once more the old
stone-coloured vault over the sallow meadows and the russet woods,
as I set forth on a dog-cart from Wendover to Tring.
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