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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Poem Explanation Poet's Biography
First Line: Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Last Line: And one by one the stars in heaven pale!
Subject(s): Westminster Abbey
First Line: Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Last Line: And one by one the stars in heaven pale!
Subject(s): Westminster Abbey
"The Southern Transept, hardly known by
any other name but Poet's Corner."
DEAN STANLEY.
TREAD softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Are those that hold your Poets. Kings and queens
Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.
Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!
But he who from the darkling mass of men
Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne
To finer ether, and becomes a voice
For all the voiceless, God anointed him:
His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.
Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread.
Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns
Lies richer dust than ever nature hid
Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart,
Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand --
The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul.
How vain and all ignoble seems that greed
To him who stands in this dim claustral air
With these most sacred ashes at his feet!
This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this --
The spark that once illumed it lingers still.
O ever-hallowed spot of English earth!
If the unleashed and happy spirit of man
Have option to revisit our dull globe,
What August Shades at midnight here convene
In the miraculous sessions of the moon,
When the great pulse of London faintly throbs,
And one by one the stars in heaven pale!
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ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY by FRANCIS BEAUMONT
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY by JOHN BETJEMAN
ON SIR PALMES FAIRBORNE'S TOMB, IN WESTERMINSTER ABBEY by JOHN DRYDEN
ON FIRST ENTERING WESTMINSTER ABBEY by LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
EPITAPH FOR ONE WHO WOULD NOT BE BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY by ALEXANDER POPE
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN; ON THE CENTOTAPH IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY by ALFRED TENNYSON
ON BUTLER'S MONUMENT [IN WESTMINSTER] by SAMUEL WESLEY
POET'S CORNER by ALFRED AUSTIN
IN POET'S CORNER by EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE