Thus, it was an especial precaution that none but
sweet-scented evergreens and flowers should be employed. The intention
seems to have been to soften the horrors of the tomb, to beguile the
mind from brooding over the disgraces of perishing mortality, and to
associate the memory of the deceased with the most delicate and
beautiful objects in nature. There is a dismal process going on in the
grave, ere dust can return to its kindred dust, which the
imagination shrinks from contemplating; and we seek still to think
of the form we have loved, with those refined associations which it
awakened when blooming before us in youth and beauty. "Lay her i'
the earth," says Laertes, of his virgin sister,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!
Herrick, also, in his "Dirge of Jephtha," pours forth a fragrant
flow of poetical thought and image, which in a manner embalms the dead
in the recollections of the living.
Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice,
And make this place all Paradise:
May sweets grow here! and smoke from hence
Fat frankincense.
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