INTRA SEPULCHRUM

What curious things we said,

What curious things we did

Up there in the world we walked till dead

Our kith and kin amid!

How we played at love,

And its wildness, weakness, woe;

Yes, played thereat far more than enough

As it turned out, I trow!

Played at believing in gods

And observing the ordinances,

I for your sake in impossible codes

Right ready to acquiesce.

Thinking our lives unique,

Quite quainter than usual kinds,

We held that we could not abide a week

The tether of typic minds.

— Yet people who day by day

Pass by and look at us

From over the wall in a casual way

Are of this unconscious.

And feel, if anything,

That none can be buried here

Removed from commonest fashioning,

Or lending note to a bier:

No twain who in heart-heaves proved

Themselves at all adept,

Who more than many laughed and loved,

Who more than many wept,

Or were as sprites or elves

Into blind matter hurled,

Or ever could have been to themselves

The centre of the world.