I stood beside the grave of him who blazed      The comet of a season, and I saw   The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed      With not the less of sorrow and of awe   On that neglected turf and quiet stone,   With name no clearer than the names unknown,      Which lay unread around it; and asked   The Gardener of that ground, why it might be      That for this plant strangers his memory tasked   Through the thick deaths of half a century;      And thus he answered—“Well, I do not know      Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;   He died before my day of sextonship,      And I had not the digging of this grave.”   And is this all? I thought,—and do we rip      The veil of Immortality? and crave   I know not what of honour and of light   Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?      So soon, and so successless? As I said,      The Architect of all on which we tread,   For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay   To extricate remembrance from the clay,      Whose minglings might confuse a Newton’s thought,   Were it not that all life must end in one,      Of which we are but dreamers;—as he caught   As ’twere the twilight of a former Sun,      Thus spoke he,—“I believe the man of whom      You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,   Was a most famous writer in his day,   And therefore travellers step from out their way      To pay him honour,—and myself whate’er   Your honour pleases,”—then most pleased I shook   From out my pocket’s avaricious nook      Some certain coins of silver, which as ’twere      Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare   So much but inconveniently:—Ye smile,   I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,      Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.      You are the fools, not I—for I did dwell   With a deep thought, and with a softened eye,   On that Old Sexton’s natural homily,      In which there was Obscurity and Fame,—      The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.