ABSTRACT
On the grave, close by the churchyard wall, they planted a rose tree,— and it was full of roses, and the nightingale flew singing over the flowers and over the grave; in the church the finest psalms sounded from the organ; the psalms that were written in the old book under the dead one’s head. The moon shone down upon the grave; but the dead one was not here; every child could go safely, even at night, and pluck a rose there by the churchyard wall. A dead person knows more than all we living ones. The dead know what a terror would come upon us, if the strange thing were to happen, that they appeared among us; the dead are better than we all; the dead return no more. The earth has been heaped over the coffin, and it is earth that lies in the coffin; and the leaves of the hymn-book are dust, and the rose with all its recollections has returned to dust likewise. But above there bloom fresh roses; the nightingale sings and the organ sounds, and the remembrance lives of the old grandmother, with the mild eyes that always looked young. Eyes can never die! Ours will once behold grandmother again, young and beautiful, as when for the first time she kissed the fresh red rose that is now dust in the grave.
