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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Poem Explanation Poet Analysis 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 | |||
"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! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...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 AFTER THE RAIN by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH AN ALPINE PICTURE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH AN ODE ON THE UNVEILING OF THE SHAW MEMORIA BOSTON COMMON, MAY 31, 1897 by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH |
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