Doggerel,' he thought, 'will do for church-wardens, <br />Poetry's precious enough not to be wasted,' <br />And rhymed it all out with a skew smile: <br />'Spare these stones. Curst be he that moves my bones- <br />Will hold the hands of masons and grave-diggers.' <br />But why did the good man care? For he wanted quietness. <br />He had tasted enough life in his time <br />To stuff a thousand; he wanted not to swim wide <br />In waters, nor wander the enormous air, <br />Nor grow into grass, enter through the mouths of cattle <br />The bodies of lusty women and warriors, <br />But all be finished. He knew it feelingly; the game <br />Of the whirling circles had become tiresome. <br />'Annihilation's impossible, but insulated <br />In the church under the rhyming flagstone <br />Perhaps my passionate ruins may be kept off market <br />To the end of this age. Oh, a thousand years <br />Will hardly leach,' he thought, 'this dust of that fire.'<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shakespeare-s-grave/
