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Thomas Hardy - The To-be-forgot
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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."
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