Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/77

Rh On that neglected turf and quiet stone,

With name no clearer than the names unknown,

Which lay unread around it; and I 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,