An Autograph

I write my name as one,     On sands by waves oerrun     Or winters frosted pane,     Traces a record vain.     Oblivions blankness claims     Wiser and better names,     And well my own may pass     As from the strand or glass.     Wash on, O waves of time!     Melt, noons, the frosty rime!     Welcome the shadow vast,     The silence that shall last.     When I and all who know     And love me vanish so,     What harm to them or me     Will the lost memory be?     If any words of mine,     Through right of life divine,     Remain, what matters it     Whose hand the message writ?     Why should the crowners quest     Sit on my worst or best?     Why should the showman claim     The poor ghost of my name?     Yet, as when dies a sound     Its spectre lingers round,     Haply my spent life will     Leave some faint echo still.     A whisper giving breath     Of praise or blame to death,     Soothing or saddening such     As loved the living much.     Therefore with yearnings vain     And fond I still would fain     A kindly judgment seek,     A tender thought bespeak.     And, while my words are read,     Let this at least be said     Whateer his lifes defeatures,     He loved his fellow-creatures.     If, of the Laws stone table,     To hold he scarce was able     The first great precept fast,     He kept for man the last.     Through mortal lapse and dulness     What lacks the Eternal Fulness,     If still our weakness can     Love Him in loving man?     Age brought him no despairing     Of the worlds future faring;     In human nature still     He found more good than ill.     To all who dumbly suffered,     His tongue and pen he offered;     His life was not his own,     Nor lived for self alone.     Hater of din and riot     He lived in days unquiet;     And, lover of all beauty,     Trod the hard ways of duty.     He meant no wrong to any     He sought the good of many,     Yet knew both sin and folly,     May God forgive him wholly!