They lie
even about the sides of the rough path that goes round the church. Some
fragments are so honeycombed that they are as light in the hand as
touchwood; others have undergone little, if any, chemical change. Here
people must often walk upon the bones of their not very remote ancestors;
but they know, if they think about the matter at all, that their turn will
come to be similarly treated by their own descendants. There is no better
place for meditating upon all the vanities than one of these old rural
cemeteries. Turn not away, you other wanderers who may chance to stray into
these little fields consecrated to the dead, and excuse your unwillingness
to reflect by muttering, 'Horrible!' There is nothing horrible, after all,
in these poor bones. What matters it whether they are bleached by the sun
or blackened by the clay? It is good for you and for me to see them here,
and to realize how soon all men are forgotten, how quickly their bones,
mingling with others, give no more clue to the individual life to which
they once belonged than a particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does
to the matter from which it parted.
It is not good, however, to stay moralizing in a cemetery until a
thunderstorm bursts over your head.
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