The to-be-forgotten
Thomas Hardy’s poem “The To-be-forgotten” first appeared in his second collection of poetry, “Poems of the Past and the Present”, published in 1901.
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Dorset, England, and he died on 11 January 1928 in Dorset, England, at the age of 87.A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, Hardy was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels. Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.
External links:
I heard a small sad sound, And stood awhile among the tombs around: “Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are you distrest, Now, screened from life’s unrest?”
— “O not at being here; But that our future second death is near; When, with the living, memory of us numbs, And blank oblivion comes!
“These, our sped ancestry, Lie here embraced by deeper death than we; Nor shape nor thought of theirs can you descry With keenest backward eye.
“They count as quite forgot; They are as men who have existed not; Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath; It is the second death.
“We here, as yet, each day Are blest with dear recall; as yet, can say We hold in some soul loved continuance Of shape and voice and glance.
“But what has been will be — First memory, then oblivion’s swallowing sea; Like men foregone, shall we merge into those Whose story no one knows.
“For which of us could hope To show in life that world-awakening scope Granted the few whose memory none lets die, But all men magnify?
“We were but Fortune’s sport; Things true, things lovely, things of good report We neither shunned nor sought… We see our bourne, And seeing it we mourn.”