What is your pageantry, O earth!
And what is your wealth, O sea!
What is your grandeur, spangled heavens,
Upheld in majesty?
Resplendent jewels flash and gleam
On earth's triumphant breast,
But midst her brightest galaxies
Man goeth to his rest.
Down in the depths, the coral reefs
Shine through the glistening wave;
But midst the gardens of the deep
The mortal makes his grave.
Yon heavens in seas of azure lie,
And continents of cloud,
They wrap our frail humanity
In one vast burial shroud.
Beauty and glory vie to claim
Earth's fruitage and her bloom,
To wreathe in posthumous designs
The universal tomb.
They gather up the sea's rare pearls
And strew them o'er her bed,
They chant with all her troubled waves
The dirges of her dead.
They visit on their starry wings
The heaven's celestial spheres,
And from the precincts of the clouds
They shed the mourner's tears.
Yet shall earth see her treasures raised
From out her moldering sod,
Yet shall the sea behold her waves
Yield up their spoil to God.
Yet shall yon heavens, now looking down
On mortal blight and ban,
See immortality come forth
From the great tomb of man.
