His Bay at

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17840, 12 October 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

His Bay at

By “ Darius.”

Here In the hallowed ground There Is a calm as deep As Silence In profound ' And everlasting sleep. The vault Is far and high, The warm air finely spun Into a boundless sky Where stands a moveless sun. Trees and the winds are still; The leaves droop in content.. The sra behind the hill It’s all or rage has spent. Cod’s acre lies around And all this peace is for The Dead beneath each mound And I, the visitor. IT was only yesterday that I learned what a peaceful and hopeful place a cemetery is, and since then I have been wondering why so many people arc shy of entering the gates of the City of the Silent as if it were a sorrowful place, whereas there is no place that has i about it such an Atmosphere of Hope. Why. upon every stone there are engraved words of eternal Hope and Love! Those , who wonder where all bad men are buried vpicc the jibe because of the virtues that are ascribed to the living after death; but, after ali, may not the last summing up of the finished character and all actions be the nearest to a true estimate. At least the place bears evidence of man’s sincerest charity and we are told that as we Judge so shall we be judged and the mercy we show we shall receive. It Is nothing that people have died: It is everything that in spite of all griefs and trials and separations the living still bear witness to an eternal hope in a blessed immortality. It was with the intention of learning something concerning the' dead from the dead themselves that I found myself drawn on the memorable yesterday to the place of their abode. I wished to ascertain how near the dead are to us or how far away. To enquire whether they are lonely or find sweet communion in the company of each other. Whether the days seem long to them or time passes quickly with them, and whether or not their souls return at times to the place of their bodies’ sepulture, and so I found myself arrested in the city named ~ by the sight of a stone upon which was carved only these words: William Mac Michael. (Here surely was laid the hody of an Independent soul, and yet I wondered if the spirit of William Mac Michael, when the visitors came on the Iloly Day to lay wreaths and flowers upon the graves of other lauded dead, ever felt lonely and rather neglected by the dwellers upon the earth. The stone was old and grey and f -weather-beaten ... as old and grey and '' world-worn as I. It did not seem right to mo that William, in spite of all his seeming bravery and independence of spirit in the world, should be left friendless from year to year and with no floral gift .to lighten the dead body's abode. A lonely soul in life perhaps, and a v lonely soul in death. Yet perhaps at the last, even in his loneliness he went forth unfearing and secure in the thought that as he had overcome many and difficult things in life his good star would shine upon him in his death and through the hereafter. I wondered if he joyed in the sun as I do. If he drew from the sun the Wonderful Magnetic Power that is daily drawn from it by sun-lovers

The Visitors Who Called.

and the wise animals that gain wisdom not from books but from feeling. Did the daily sunshine dispel his fears and misgiving of the night? No doubt he felt courageous, positive, strong, when the sun shone as it shone yesterday, and that when the shadows of night descended upon him his courage dwindled until he passed from the positive to the negative state. Probably he had knowledge of the fact that more souls pass from human bodies during the night than through the day, and himself passed either in darkness or in the cold dawn. It was a wintry dawn, at cockcrow, when Peter denied Christ, and, comfortably in our beds and hearing that morning clarion we blame Peter. It is the darkness, the cold, the night-induced doubts that betray us and make us traitors to others, and betray us to Death. But looking upon this worn stone over the head of 'William Mac Michael there Is sign Neither of Hop® Nor Fear. He has merely had his'name entered upon the innumerous scroll of the departed. Should I go and gather a bunch of flowers and come back and lay them upon his grave he might resent such attention from a mere stranger. And yet I have a feeling, rather I have an assurance, that here each lives in the other’s soul, and I am one of this company though living and not dead. For what is there between us but a few years and, a few years, what are they in the sight of one to whom an eternity is but a watch in the night? There Is an Inner Vision that can compass the invisible, just as there are inaudible songs of surpassing sweetness. I see here a number of disembodied souls, and they come with wonderful blooms In their hands to lay them upon graves of their material bodies, or the bodies that once were theirs. I think those blooms must be redolent of old and sweet associations, dear friendships, undying loves experienced in the flesh, together with aspirations divine and adorations. It is so, for I have it now from the Spirit of William Mac Michael. Straightly to his worn cross above the sunken mound upon which never a flower has been laid by mortal hands since the day of his death, now forty years ago, a spirit comes and it is his. The old fleshly tenement has not been forgotten and it is not despised. It is a fair spirit and a happy spirit. Though the few years of death may have ennobled it, surely William was a manly man. Let us see what the spirit intends. The flowers are laid upon the grave and there is a smile of ineffable sweetness upon the lips of the spirit as it stands, forward-leaning, above the tomb to lay ’upon it those paradisal flowers that {ii beauty are beyond the imagining of the lofties't mind. . . And now at -every-grave there is a spirit and in the hand of each spirit paradisal blooms from the Hilled fields and roseries of God. And I had thought a foolish thought, that William Mac Michael might have felt Lonely and Neglected under that old stone with the austere inscription. I had thought to lay a few earthly flowers upon his grave, but in view of all those spirits on that visiting day, and in view of those blooms of indescribable beauty, what could I do hut steal away, the worldly flowers remaining ungathered and the heavenly invisible remaining to remind mo how from the corruptible springs incorruption and from the mortal, Immortality.