Volume 19 / Part 4 — Who Will Remember?

Like as a pebble on the salt sea-sands

That some wave washes to an unknown shore,

So shall we quietly be swept away

From out the millions to be seen no more.

Who will remember, who will say “dear friend”?

Who will walk sadly seeking yet a trace

Of well-known footsteps, of caressing hands,

Of some remembrance of a lost, dead face?

Ask not too much of human hearts that wait;

Fresh buds will blossom for their eyes at last,

And flowers dead, however sweet they were,

Are, like the whole of earth's dead treasures, past.

[pg 654]