A Word to the Unwise

Charles Main, of Main & Winchester, attend
With friendly ear the chit-chat of a friend
  Who knows you not, yet knows that you and he
Travel two roads that have a common end.

We journey forward through the time allowed,
I humbly bending, you erect and proud.
  Our heads alike will stable soon the worm⁠—
The one that’s lifted, and the one that’s bowed.

You in your mausoleum shall repose,
I where it pleases Him who sleep bestows;
  What matter whether one so little worth
Shall stain the marble or shall feed the rose?

Charles Main, I had a friend who died one day.
A metal casket held his honored clay.
  Of cyclopean architecture stood
The splendid vault where he was laid away.

A dozen years, and lo! the roots of grass
Had burst asunder all the joints; the brass,
  The gilded ornaments, the carven stones
Lay tumbled all together in a mass.

A dozen years! That taxes your belief.
Make it a thousand if the time’s too brief.
  ’Twill be the same to you; when you are dead
You cannot even count your days of grief.

Suppose a pompous monument you raise
Till on its peak the solar splendor blaze
  While yet about its base the night is black;
But will it give your glory length of days?

Say, when beneath your rubbish has been thrown,
Some rogue to reputation all unknown⁠—
  Men’s backs being turned⁠—should lift his thieving hand,
Efface your name and substitute his own,

Whose then would be the monument? To whom
Would be the fame? Forgotten in your gloom⁠—
  Your very name forgotten⁠—ah, my friend,
The name is all that’s rescued by the tomb.

For memory of worth and work we go
To other records than a stone can show.
  These lacking, naught remains; with these
The stone is needless for the world will know.

Then build your mausoleum if you must,
And creep into it with a perfect trust;
  But in the twinkling of an eye the plow
Shall pass without obstruction through your dust.

Another movement of the pendulum,
And, lo! the desert-haunting wolf shall come,
  And, seated on the spot, shall howl by night
O’er rotting cities, desolate and dumb.