He sleeps among the hills he knew,
They look upon his early rest,
The winds that in his childhood blew—
They stir the grass upon his breast.
His grave is green in that sweet vale
Where the fair river flows the same;
It rolls, and gathers to its tale
The added memory of his name.
And youth is his: though time extends
The growing years from spring to spring,
He still will be to all his friends
Secure from what their touches bring.
Calm then will be his wished for rest
After the weary toil of feet,
To sleep—the grass above his breast—
And know that perfect peace is sweet.
O better thus than he should lie,
To mingle with no kindred earth,
In the lone desert where the sky
Burns all things into fiery dearth,
And where not even one kindly eye
Could note the grave wherein he slept;
The dusky savage passing by
Would heed it not as on he swept.
But this was not to be: he lies
 Near to the murmur of his rills;
He rests beneath our Scottish skies,
And in the silence of his hills.
His feet had travelled far in lands
Where all was strange and ever new;
And he was girt by swarthy bands
That round his eager footsteps drew.
But yet, when spending all his strength,
And when the shadow by his side
The beckoning finger raised at length,
It was not in those lands he died.
The roar of London and the rush
Of all that mighty life he heard—
And then the silence and the hush
By which his early youth was stirred.
Within this hush he sleeps; no call
To feel the wild desire to roam
Around the hills he knew, and all
The well-known fields and paths of home.
His grave is green in that sweet vale
Where the fair Nith flows on the same;
It rolls, and gathers to its tale
The dear possession of his name.