So, sojourning in their town,
He mused on them and on their once renown,
And said, “I’ll seek their resting-place to-morrow
Ere I lie down,
“And end, lest I forget,
Those ires of many years that I regret,
Renew their names, that men may see some liegeness
Is left them yet.”
Duly next day he went
And sought the church he had known them to frequent,
And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing
Where they lay pent,
Till by remembrance led
He stood at length beside their slighted bed,
Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter
Could now be read.
“Thus years obliterate
Their graven worth, their chronicle, their date!
At once I’ll garnish and revive the record
Of their past state,
“That still the sage may say
In pensive progress here where they decay,
‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
Told in their day.’”
While speaking thus he turned,
For a form shadowed where they lay inurned,
And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture,
And tropic-burned.
“Sir, I am right pleased to view
That ancestors of mine should interest you,
For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . .
They are time-worn, true,
“But that’s a fault, at most,
Sculptors can cure. On the Pacific coast
I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears
I’d trace ere lost,
“And hitherward I come,
Before this same old Time shall strike me numb,
To carry it out.”—“Strange, this is!” said the other;
“What mind shall plumb