I

   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?”

II

   —“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!

III

   “Those who our grandsires be

Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;

Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry

   With keenest backward eye.

IV

   “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.

V

   “We here, as yet, each day

Are blest with dear recall; as yet, alway

In some soul hold a loved continuance

   Of shape and voice and glance.

VI

   “But what has been will be—

First memory, then oblivion’s turbid sea;

Like men foregone, shall we merge into those

   Whose story no one knows.

VII

   “For which of us could hope

To show in life that world-awakening scope

Granted the few whose memory none lets die,

   But all men magnify?

VIII

   “We were but Fortune’s sport;

Things true, things lovely, things of good report

We neither shunned nor sought . . . We see our bourne,

   And seeing it we mourn.”