Some lines from Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant who wrote it when he was seventeen.

"Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world - with kings,

The powerful of the earth - the wise, the good.

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun - the vales

Stretching in pensive quietness between;

The venerable woods - rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,

Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste -

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man."

". . . As the long train

Of ages glides away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes

In the full strength of years, matron and maid,

The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man -

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,

By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan, which moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."