Canto LXXVII

What hope is here for modern rhyme    To him, who turns a musing eye    On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie Foreshorten'd in the tract of time?

These mortal lullabies of pain    May bind a book, may line a box,    May serve to curl a maiden's locks; Or when a thousand moons shall wane

A man upon a stall may find,    And, passing, turn the page that tells    A grief, then changed to something else, Sung by a long-forgotten mind.

But what of that? My darken'd ways    Shall ring with music all the same;    To breathe my loss is more than fame, To utter love more sweet than praise.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto LXXVII