276 CHARLES DICKENS
Lay him to rest where regal heads
Lie crownless, and unheeding all;
Where silence folds its mystic robes
Around them like a shadowy pall.
Garments of purple may not win
Such memories as for him we keep,
Nor call so sad a requiem forth,
Above their calm, unbroken sleep.
Lay him to rest where poets sleep,
Who sang the world's enduring songs--
The cadence of whose wondrous strains.
A grateful earth with pride prolongs.
Gently around the hallowed spot
Floats their remembered minstrelsy;
Like them, he breathed his spirit forth,
And won an immortality.
Lay him amid the good and great,
The lights of many a vanished age;
His country claims him, and his fame
Is her own brilliant heritage.
Footsteps from every clime shall come--
Those by his tender fancies taught,
Shall linger round the sacred shrine
With memories green, that wither not.
