James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
October 12Tennyson
By Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)(The Minister speaks)
B
To me that have grown,
Stone laid upon stone,
As the stormy brood
Of English blood
Has wax’d and spread
And fill’d the world,
With sails unfurl’d;
With men that may not lie;
With thoughts that cannot die.
Into the storied hall,
Where I have garner’d all
My harvest without weed;
My chosen fruits of goodly seed,
And lay him gently down among
The men of state, the men of song:
The men that would not suffer wrong:
The thought-worn chieftains of the mind:
Head-servants of the human kind.
The autumn sun shall shed
Its beams athwart the bier’s
Heap’d blooms: a many tears
Shall flow; his words, in cadence sweet and strong,
Shall voice the full hearts of the silent throng.
Bring me my dead!
For vanish’d hand clasp: drinking in thy fill
Of holy grief; forgive, that pious theft
Robs thee of all, save memories, left:
Not thine to kneel beside the grassy mound
While dies the western glow: and all around
Is silence; and the shadows closer creep
And whisper softly: All must fall asleep.