"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poets' Corner" <br />DEAN STANLEY <br /> <br />Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs <br />Are those that hold your poets. Kings and queens <br />Are facile accidents of Time and Chance. <br />Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there! <br />But he who from the darkling mass of men <br />Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne <br />To finer ether, and becomes a voice <br />For all the voiceless, God annointed him: <br />His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine. <br /> <br />Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread. <br />Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns <br />Lies richer dust than ever nature hid <br />Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart, <br />Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand-- <br />The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul. <br />How vain and all ignoble seems that greed <br />To him who stands in this dim claustral air <br />With these most sacred ashes at his feet! <br />This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this-- <br />The spark that once illumed it lingers still. <br />O ever-hallowed spot of English earth! <br />If the unleashed and unhappy spirit of man <br />Have option to visit our dull globe, <br />What august Shades at midnight here convene <br />In the miraculous sessions of the moon, <br />When the great pulse of London faintly throbs, <br />And one by one the stars in heaven pale!<br /><br />Thomas Bailey Aldrich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-westminster-abbey/
