The To-Be-Forgotten
I heard a small sad sound,And stood awhile amid the tombs around:“Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are ye distrest,Now, screened from life’s unrest?”
—“O not at being here;But that our future second death is drear;When, with the living, memory of us numbs,And blank oblivion comes!
“Those who our grandsires beLie here embraced by deeper death than we;Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descryWith keenest backward eye.
“They bide as quite forgot;They are as men who have existed not;Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;It is the second death.
“We here, as yet, each dayAre blest with dear recall; as yet, alwayIn some soul hold a loved continuanceOf shape and voice and glance.
“But what has been will be—First memory, then oblivion’s turbid sea;Like men foregone, shall we merge into thoseWhose story no one knows.
“For which of us could hopeTo show in life that world-awakening scopeGranted the few whose memory none lets die,But all men magnify?
“We were but Fortune’s sport;Things true, things lovely, things of good reportWe neither shunned nor sought . . . We see our bourne,And seeing it we mourn.”
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