Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side? Is there no baseness we would hide? No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove, I had such reverence for his blame, See with clear eye some hidden shame And I be lessen'd in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue: Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great Death: The dead shall look me thro' and thro'.
Be near us when we climb or fall: Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours With larger other eyes than ours, To make allowance for us all.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto LI