This poem appeared as one of the “Poetic Waifs” in John A. Joyce's autobiography My Checkered Life on page 315.

Oak Hill

by John A. Joyce

GRAND home of the dead! I mourn as I tread
Near the forms that crumble below;
How sad and how still the graves at Oak Hill,
In the quiet evening glow.

Here's an old, old stone, moss-grown and alone,
Where Time has left not a trace
Of the name it bore in the days of yore,
When the body ceased its race.

Vain, vain is the thought; no man ever bought
Exemption from final decay;
To live and to rot, and then be forgot —
The fate of the quick of to-day.

Oak Hill, in My Checkered Life, by John A. Joyce, 1883. (PDF)