Hardy’s Funeral lyrics

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