Then we come to Shakspeare himself,—the poet who is the glory of the English race, and famous throughout the whole of the civilised world. Shakspeare, as we know, is not buried in the Abbey, but in the Parish Church of his native town, Stratford-on-Avon. The monument in the Abbey was not put up until long years after his death. On it are the famous lines from The Tempest—
“The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherits, shall dissolve;
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.”
The connexion of Sir Walter Raleigh with the Abbey is not so direct, because he is not buried there, but in St. Margaret’s, close by. However, Raleigh was imprisoned in the old Gatehouse of the monastery the night before his execution, and the Dean of Westminster went to see him, and to pray with him. During that last night of his life Sir Walter Raleigh, after the final parting with his wife, wrote the following well-known lines on the blank leaf of his Bible—
“Ev’n such is Time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;