THE BUILDER MARCH 1915

SOLEMN STRIKES THE FUNERAL CHIME
AN EXPOSITION BY THE EDITOR
John Fort Newton

HOW many tender memories these old familiar words evoke in the mind
of a Mason. Often in the open lodge--alas, all too often beside the
open grave--he has heard them march with slow, majestic step to the
measure of the Pleyel Hymn. Never were words and melody more fitly
blended, and they induce a mood pensive indeed, but not plaintive,
rich in pathos without being poignant --a mood of sweet sadness
caught at that point where it stops short of bitter, piercing
grief. Yet few know when it was written and by whom, though many
must have paused to muse over the faith of which it sings.

The hymn was written by David Vinton, a lecturer on Masonry and
teacher of the ritual in the first quarter of the last century,
whose field of labor was in the South, chiefly in North Carolina.
Unfortunately, his path through life was dogged by the demon of
drink, which left stains upon his character for which he was
expelled by a Lodge in North Carolina. He died, so Mackey records,
in Shakertown, Kentucky, in July 1833, but Morris dates his death
six years earlier and says that it occurred near Russellville, Ky.
Morris adds this pathetic fact: "Nor were his own most beautiful
words sung over his grave, on account of lapse from a life of
sobriety." 

In 1816 Vinton issued a volume entitled "The Masonic Minstrel, a
Selection of Masonic, Sentimental, and Humorous Songs, Duets,
Glees, Canons, Rounds and Canzonets, Respectfully Dedicated to the
Most Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons,"
with an appendix containing a short historical sketch of Masonry
and a list of all the Lodges in the United States. It was printed
for the author by H. Mann and Company, Dedham, Mass., and more than
twelve thousand copies were sold to the Craft. This volume
contained his funeral dirge set to the melody of the Pleyel hymn.
As Mackey remarks, "This contribution should preserve the name of
Vinton among the Craft, and in some measure atone for his faults,
whatever they may have been."

From the preface of the Minstrel we learn that Vinton was appointed
by Mount Vernon Lodge, in Providence, to procure a book of songs
fol use in the Lodge, and this suggested the book to his mind, the
more so when he was unable to find any book to meet the need. This
quaint volume, yellow with age, and alternating quickly from grave
to gay, from lively to severe, tempts comment, did time permit; but
our concern here is only with his dirge. Originally it had eight
stanzas, only four of which are used in our ritual and burial
service, and Vinton little thought that his lines would be sung for
a decade, then laid aside, then taken up again and sung wherever a
Brother Mason is laid to rest, "in the land called America."

II


Whether we hear this hymn in the tyled recesses of the Lodge, or on
a green sward out under the sky, our hearts answer to its appeal.
Albeit in less stately strain and more tender tone, it strikes the
same note that sounds through the 90th Psalm---that mighty funeral
hymn of the human race--with its chant of the swift death of
mourning flowers, of the vanishing of man, and the hush of profound
sleep to which all things mortal decline. How helpless man is,
pursued by Time and overtaken by Death--his life a vapor that
melts, his span of years a tale that is soon told. There is here
that nameless sorrow, that unutterable sadness which lingers in all
mortal music whatsoever, and will linger in it while yet we walk in
the dim country of this world where Death seems to divide divinity
with God. Evermore, in hours however trivial or tragic, in moods
pensive or gay--

"Solemn strikes the funeral chime, 
Notes of our departing time;
As we journey here below,
Through a pilgrimage of woe."

Touched by the twilights of time, the singer meditates and prays.
He sees that the vast machinery of Nature carries forward the
entire human race, and, without fail, drops them into one final
sleep. Yet each departs alone--the father without the child, the
wife without the husband, the judge without the court, the
statesman unattended, the babe with no arm around it, aye, and king
and peasant alike; and all walk one dark, inevitable path. In what
silence and dignity they go, their faces all turned in one
direction, following the footprints of a many-millioned multitude
into the infinite. We who are compelled to watch their moving
figures are powerless to detain them, and can only say farewell and
then weep.

"Mortals now indulge a tear, 
For mortality is here;
See how wide her trophies wave, 
O'er the slumbers of the grave."

With all our philosophy and wit, death remains a bitter, old, and
haggard fact which no man may either evade or avert. There is
something appalling in the masterful negation and collapse of the
body. It is profound. It is pathetic. Words are futile, and there
is in that last silence what makes them seem foolish. What avails
it what any man may have to say about death? The real question is,
what are we to say to it, whether or not we shall let it have the
last word.

"Not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death."

Heart and flesh fail; and the generations come and go, following
the forlorn march of dust. Truly, as for man, his days are as
grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; for the wind
passeth over it, and it is gone.

--III--

Suddenly the shadow lifts, light shineth in darkness, and we see
how true it is that the soul of man is the one unconquerable thing
upon this earth. How wonderful is this ancient, high, heroic faith
which refuses to admit that the grave is the gigantic coffin lid of
a dull and mindless universe descending upon it at last. Life tries
it, sorrow beshadows it, sin stains it, and yet it is victorious.
When doubt deepens this faith becomes more profound, and out of the
blackest tragedy it rises with a song of triumph. So it has been
from the far time when the oldest book in the world was written,
and so it will be until whatever is to be the end of things.

"Here, another guest we bring; 
Seraphs of celestial wing, 
To our funeral altar come; 
Waft a friend and brother home."

Such faith is not a mere surrender; it is a force prophetic of its
own fulfillment. At its touch the graveyard becomes a cemetery--
that is, a sleeping chamber --and dark Death an All Man's Inn where
a fellow pilgrim takes lodging for a night. Those whom we call the
dead are the guests of God, whose love is the keeper of unknown
revelations. Also, our singer sees that the social life of man, its
warmth of sympathy, its sanctity of friendship, its dear love of
man for his comrade, has enduring value. Because this is so;
because life is brief at its longest, and broken at its best, it
must be filled with Truth and Love; that so we may bring to the
Gate in the Mist something too noble to die. Hence the wise prayer:

"Lord of all below, above, 
Fill our souls with Truth and Love; 
As dissolves our Earthly Tie, 
Take us to Thy Lodge on High."

O Death, where is thy victory? Our trust is in God, that He who
made us what we are will lead us to what we ought to be. Higher
faith there is none. Even so, Masonry rests its hope upon the
ultimate Reality, the first truth and the last, and it is therefore
that its singer sees, amidst the fluctuating shadows of this
twilight world, an august, incomprehensible destiny for man. As a
song of triumph the four stanzas omitted from this historic hymn
are worthy of remembrance:

"For beyond the grave there lie 
Brighter mansions in the sky ! 
Where, enthroned, the Diety 
Gives man immortality.

There, enlarged, his soul will see 
What was veiled in mystery; 
Heavenly glories fill the place, 
Show his Maker face to face. 
God of life's eternal day ! 
Guide us, lest from Thee we stray, 
By a false, delusive light, 
To the shades of endless night. 
Calm, the good man meets his fate, 
Guards celestial round him wait; 
See! he bursts these mortal chains, 
And o'er death the victory gains."



GOING TO BED.

There is a hall in every house, 
Behind whose wainscot gnaws a mouse; 
Along whose sides are empty rooms, 
Peopled with dreams and ancient dooms. 
When down this hall you take your light, 
And face, alone, the hollow night, 
Be like the child who goes to bed, 
Though faltering and half adread 
Of something crouching crookedly 
In every corner he can see 
Ready to snatch him into gloom, 
Yet goes on bravely to his room, 
Knowing, above him, watching there, 
His Father waits upon the stair.
--Madison Cawein.
