What is my name to you? ’T will die:

a wave that has but rolled to reach

with a lone splash a distant beach;

or in the timbered night a cry …

’T will leave a lifeless trace among

names on your tablets: the design

of an entangled gravestone line

in an unfathomable tongue.

What is it then? A long-dead past,

lost in the rush of madder dreams,

upon your soul it will not cast

Mnemosyne’s pure tender beams.

But if some sorrow comes to you,

utter my name with sighs, and tell

the silence: “Memory is true—

there beats a heart wherein I dwell.”