Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers
To touch the covered corpse of him that fled
The uplands for the fens, and rioted
Like a sick satyr with dooms worshippers?
Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse
To tell the story of the life he led.
Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,
And let the worms be its biographers.
Song sloughs away the sin to find redress
In arts complete remembrance: nothing clings
For long but laurel to the stricken brow
That felt the Muses finger; nothing less
Than hells fulfilment of the end of things
Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.
