#grave

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. ... What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#grass #graves #life #beauty

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe. ↗

— Clifford D. Simak

#death #gravestone #science #science-fiction #stars

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#among #democrat #domination #endangered #government

We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven. ↗

— Tryon Edwards

#early #grave #graves #heaven #infants

But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave. ↗

— William Wordsworth

#bright #grave #lead #lovely #night

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself. ↗

— Khalil Gibran

#ceases #grave #itself #laugh #other

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. ↗

— Thomas Gray

#grave #lead #paths

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#aged #beautiful #been #grave #her

If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener. ↗

— Jared Harris

#grant #graves #hugh #like #look

He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave. ↗

— Matthew Henry

#feet #grave #head #heaven #his