'They would believe the lie'

The Myles Standish Burial Ground, in Duxbury, Mass. It’s the final resting place (between the cannons) of several well-known Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, including Captain Myles Standish, and was the location of Duxbury's first meeting house. It was in use from about 1638 until 1789, at which point the cemetery was abandoned. It was reclaimed in 1887 by the Duxbury Rural Society.

Colonial-era graves in Pemaquid Cemetery, Maine.

Photo by DrStew82

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.

The verses in it say and say:
“The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

“In a Disused Graveyard, by Robert Frost