Songs

Yesterday we went to Hardy's funeral. What did I think of? Of Max
Beerbohm's letter . . . or a lecture . . . about women's writing.
At intervals some emotion broke in. But I doubt the capacity of
the human animal for being dignified in ceremony. One catches a
bishop's frown and twitch; sees his polished shiny nose; suspects
the rapt spectacled young priest, gazing at the cross he carries,
of being a humbug . . . next here is the coffin, an overgrown one;
like a stage coffin, covered with a white satin cloth; bearers
elderly gentlemen rather red and stiff, holding to the corners;
pigeons flying outside . . . processions to poets corner;
dramatic "In sure and certain hope of immortality" perhaps
melodramatic . . . Over all this broods for me some uneasy sense
of change and mortality and how partings are deaths; and then a
sense of my own fame . . . and a sense of the futility of it all.