IN MEMORIAM EXAMINATORIS CUIUSDAM

Lo, where yon undistinguished grave

Erects its grassy pile on

One who to all Experience gave

An Alpha or Epsilon!

The world and eke the world’ s content,

And all therein that passes,

With marks numerical ( per cent. )

He did dispose in classes:

Not his to ape the critic crew

Which vulgarly appraises

The Good, the Beautiful, the True

In literary phrases:

He did his estimate express

In terms precise and weighty,—

And Vice got ( or less,)

While Virtue rose to .

Now hath he closed his earthly lot

All in his final haven,—

( And be the stone that marks the spot

On one side only graven,)

Bring papers on his grave to strew

Amid the grass and clover,

And plant thereby that pencil blue

Wherewith he looked them over!

There, freed from every human ill

And fleshly trammels gross, he

Lies in his resting-place until

The final Viva Voce:

So let him rest till crack of doom

Of mortal tasks aweary,—

And nothing write upon his tomb

Save β —(? ).