The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди

      The To-Be-Forgotten

       Table of Contents

      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.”