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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

Remembered by What we have Done

page 63

Remembered by What we have Done.

Needs then the praise of the love-written record,
The name and the epitaph graved on the stone?
The filings we have lived for, let them be our record,
We ourselves but remembered by what we have done.

We need not be missed, if our lives have been bearing
(As their summer and autumn moved silently on)
The bloom, and the fruit, and the seed of its season—
We shall still be remembered by what we have done.

We need not be missed, e'en if others succeed us,
To reap down those fields which in spring time we've sown;
They who ploughed and who sowed are not missed to the reaper—
They are only remembered by what they have done.

Not ourselves, but the truths that in life we have spoken—
Not ourselves, but the seeds that in life we have sown—
Shall pass on to ages; all about us forgotten,
Save the truths we have spoken, the things we have done.

So let our living be, so be our dying;
So let our names lie, unblazoned, unknown:
Unpraised and unmissed, we shall still be remembered,
Yes.—but remembered by what we have done.

H. Bonar,