Below is a poem submitted by an anonymous reader of the Welshman newspaper published on August 27th 1858 page 8 entitled THE UNKNOWN GRAVE. With over 5,000 burials in this cemetery without any marker or headstone, it’s a poem with great relevance today as it was when it was first published 168 years ago. A poignant and moving epitaph..
THE UNKNOWN GRAVE
No name to let us know
Who rests below
No word of death or birth
Only the grasses wave
Over a mound of earth
Over a nameless grave.
Did this poor wandering heart
In pain depart ?
Longing, but all too late
For the calm home again
Where patient watchers wait
And still will wait in vain.
Did mourners come in scorn
And thus forlorn
Leave him, with grief and shame
To silence and decay
And hide the tarnished name
Of the unconscious clay ?
It may be from his side
His loved ones died
And last of some bright band
(Together now once more)
He sought his home, the land
Where they were gone before.
No matter, limes have made
As cool a shade
And lingering breezes pass
As tenderly and slow
As if beneath the grass
A monarch slept below.
No grief, though loud and deep
Could stir that sleep;
And earth and heaven tell
Of rest that shall not cease
Where the cold world’s farewell
Fades into endless peace.