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.”
The To-be-forgotten
Thomas Hardy
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Poem topics: breath, future, hope, sad, sea, world, dear, voice, soul, good, small, story, true, hold, thought, mourn, sound, Valentine's Day, fortune, sport, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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Clive Reedman: It is this poem that inspired me to become a professional genealogist. It drew on my fascination with and love of churchyards and made me think on the lives of those around me there. The concept of 'second death' rang in my ears and pushed me to think on them and to learn the skills that gave me the power to bring them back and to tell again their stories.
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