Churchill's Grave, a Fact Literally Rendered by Lord Byron

I stood beside the grave of him who blazed / The comet of a season, and I saw / The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed / With not the less of sorrow and of awe / On that neglected turf and quiet stone, / With name no clearer than the names unknown, / Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd / The Gardener of that ground, why it might be / That for this plant strangers his memory task'd, / Through the thick deaths of half a century? / And thus he answered-‘Well, / I do not know why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so, / He died before my day of Sextonship, / And I had not the digging of this grave. ' / And is this all? I thought-and do we rip / The veil of Immortality, and crave / I know not what of honour and of light / Through unborn ages, to endure this blight, / So soon, and so successless? / As I said, the Architect of all on which we tread, / For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay / To extricate remembrance from the clay, / Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought, / Were it not that all life must end in one, / Of which we are but dreamers- / as he caught, as ‘twere the twilight of a former Sun, / Thus spoke he,-‘I believe the man of whom / You wot, who lies in this selected tomb, / Was a most famous writer in his day, / And therefore travellers step from out their way / To pay him honour-and myself whate'er / Your honour pleases. '-then most pleased I shook / From out my pocket's avaricious nook / Some certain coins of silver, which as ‘twere / Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare / So much but inconveniently: -Ye smile, / I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while, / Because my homely phrase the truth would tell. / You are the fools, not I-for I did dwell / With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye, / On that Old Sexton's natural homily, / In which there was Obscurity and Fame- / The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.

Diodati, 1816.