But besides soldiers, lawyers, and great ladies, there are other Elizabethan names connected with the Abbey—three of these names more famous than any we have yet mentioned. These three are Edmund Spenser, William Shakspeare and Sir Walter Raleigh. It is true that the two last of these great men lived on some time after the death of Queen Elizabeth, but as they always seem to belong more to her reign than to any other, we will speak of them now, after Spenser. Edmund Spenser, author of the _Faërie Queen_, died in Westminster, and is buried in Poets’ Corner. A very plain monument marks the spot, but the epitaph is a beautiful one: “Here lyes, expecting the second comminge of our Saviour Christ Jesus, the body of Edmond Spenser, the Prince of Poets in his tyme, whose divine spirrit needs noe othir witnesse then the workes he left behinde him.” [Illustration: [_D. Weller_. SHAKSPEARE’S MONUMENT. ] It is said that when Spenser was buried the poets who were present threw their elegies and their pens into the grave. Probably, then, Shakspeare’s pen is lying there, on Spenser’s coffin. Then we come to Shakspeare himself,—the poet who is the glory of the English race, and famous throughout the whole of the civilised world. Shakspeare, as we know, is not buried in the Abbey, but in the Parish Church of his native town, Stratford-on-Avon. The monument in the Abbey was not put up until long years after his death. On it are the famous lines from _The Tempest_— “The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherits, shall dissolve; And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.” The connexion of Sir Walter Raleigh with the Abbey is not so direct, because he is not buried there, but in St. Margaret’s, close by. However, Raleigh was imprisoned in the old Gatehouse of the monastery the night before his execution, and the Dean of Westminster went to see him, and to pray with him. During that last night of his life Sir Walter Raleigh, after the final parting with his wife, wrote the following well-known lines on the blank leaf of his Bible— “Ev’n such is Time, that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wander’d all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. But from this earth, this grave, this dust, The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.” As the colony of Virginia was first founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, his name will always remind us of the beginning of our great Colonial Empire. In St. Margaret’s Church there is a very fine window to Raleigh’s memory. This was given by some citizens of America, and the scenes in the window commemorate the founding of the New World.