And men themselves.

Ah, what life is here compressed,
Frozen into endless rest!
Down through springing blades and spires,
Down through mines, and crypts, and caves,
Still graves on graves, and graves on graves,
Down to earth's most central fires.

The morning stars sang at their birth,
In the first beginnings of time.
What voice of dolour or of mirth
At their last funeral made moan,--
Ashes to ashes--earth to earth,
And stone to stone,--
Chanting the liturgy sublime.

What matter,--in that doom's-day book
Their place is fixed--their names are writ,
Each in its individual nook,--
God's eye beholds--remembers it.

When the slow-moving centuries
Have lapsed in the former eternities,--
When the day is come which we see not yet,--
When the sea gives up its dead--
And the thrones are set,
These books shall be opened and read!