Duly next day he went And sought the church he had known them to frequent, And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing Where they lay pent, Till by remembrance led He stood at length beside their slighted bed, Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter Could now be read. “Thus years obliterate Their graven worth, their chronicle, their date! At once I’ll garnish and revive the record Of their past state, “That still the sage may say In pensive progress here where they decay, ‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents Told in their day.’” While speaking thus he turned, For a form shadowed where they lay inurned, And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture, And tropic-burned. “Sir, I am right pleased to view That ancestors of mine should interest you, For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . . They are time-worn, true, “But that’s a fault, at most, Sculptors can cure. On the Pacific coast I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears I’d trace ere lost, “And hitherward I come, Before this same old Time shall strike me numb, To carry it out.”—“Strange, this is!” said the other; “What mind shall plumb “Coincident design! Though these my father’s enemies were and mine, I nourished a like purpose—to restore them Each letter and line.” “Such magnanimity Is now not needed, sir; for you will see That since I am here, a thing like this is, plainly, Best done by me.” The other bowed, and left, Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish, By hands more deft. And as he slept that night The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking Their charnel-site. And, as unknowing his ruth, Asked as with terrors founded not on truth Why he should want them. “Ha,” they hollowly hackered, “You come, forsooth, “By stealth to obliterate Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date, That our descendant may not gild the record Of our past state, “And that no sage may say In pensive progress near where we decay: ‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents Told in their day.’” Upon the morrow he went And to that town and churchyard never bent His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward, An accident Once more detained him there; And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair To where the tomb was. Lo, it stood still wasting In no man’s care. “The travelled man you met The last time,” said the sexton, “has not yet Appeared again, though wealth he had in plenty. —Can he forget?