JMSmith posted: ""But what has been will be— First memory, then oblivion's turbid sea; Like men foregone, we join us unto those Whose story no one knows." Thomas Hardy, "The To-Be-Forgotten" (1902)* Hardy's poem is set in a lonely graveyard where the dead await what he ca" The OrthosphereRead on blog or reader
"But what has been will be— First memory, then oblivion's turbid sea; Like men foregone, we join us unto those Whose story no one knows."
Thomas Hardy, "The To-Be-Forgotten" (1902)*
Hardy's poem is set in a lonely graveyard where the dead await what he calls the "second death" of being forgotten. Once these men and women existed in the flesh, "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage;" but then in myriad ways "the flood came, and took them all away" (Matthew 24: 38-39). The first flood of physical death swept then into the twilight of this graveyard where they linger as specters, haunting the memories of a dwindling few. Soon will come the second flood of nihility that will carry them to the deeper murk of "oblivion's turbid sea."
Farris Cemetery, Walker County, Texas
*) Thomas Hardy, Poems of the Past and Present, second ed. (London: Harper & Bros., 1902), pp. 153-154.
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