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Poems

Chapter 55: WEEP NOT FOR THE DEAD. Jeremiah xxii. 10.
By William Anderson
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Poetry

About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical pieces that trace the day's and year's cycles, moving through sunrise, morning, noonday, sunset, moonlight and seasonal scenes. It pairs brief landscape lyrics with sonnets, songs, and occasional narrative ballads, blending vivid natural description—mountains, streams, birds, and coastal views—with meditative reflections on mortality, faith, memory, and poetic ambition. The tone alternates between pastoral celebration and sober contemplation, favoring clear sensory detail, moral sentiment, and accessible stanza forms that foreground feeling and observation over formal experimentation.

WEEP NOT FOR THE DEAD.
Jeremiah xxii. 10.

Oh! weep not for the dead; they are at rest—
No more shall earthly cares their minds molest;
Waste not a thought on them, nor yet bemoan
Who to the grave's cold heritage have gone.
No sorrow know they in their narrow bed;
They sin no more who slumber with the dead;
They are at rest, from earth-born troubles free,—
Fixed is their doom, as lies the stricken tree.
Weep for yourself—for those who linger here,
In pain and sadness, through the varying year;
Still looking through life's vista to the close,
When faith in Christ alone can bring repose.
And weep for those who go to other climes,
With toil and hoarding to gain gold betimes—
From friends and country parted, as if nought
But this world's fleeting wealth were worth their thought!
Weep for the dead in sin—the guilty soul
That might, but yet refuses, to be whole—
For him who never heard the Saviour's name,
For him who, having heard, rejects the same.
Oh! weep not for the dead, nor those who go
Into mortality's dread depths below;
But weep for those who mourn and suffer here,
The slaves of sin, and all its guilty fear!