Poem by Thomas Hardy

The To-Be-Forgotten

I

I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile among the tombs around:
‘Wherefore, old friends,’ said I, ‘are you distrest,
Now, screened from life’s unrest?’

II

– ‘O not at being here;
But that our future second death is near;
When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
And blank oblivion comes!

III

‘These, our sped ancestry,
Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
Nor shape nor thought of theirs can you descry
With keenest backward eye.

IV

‘They count 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, can say
We hold in some soul loved continuance
Of shape and voice and glance.

VI

‘But what has been will be –
First memory, then oblivion’s swallowing 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.’

1. Genitrix Laesa
2. V.R. 1819–1901
3. Over the Coffin
4. Song from Heine
5. Song to an Old Burden

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