Thomas Hardy
The casual acquaintance
While he was here in breath and bone,
  To speak to and to see,
Would I had known - more clearly known -
  What that man did for me
When the wind scraped a minor lay,
  And the spent west from white
To gray turned tiredly, and from gray
  To broadest bands of night!
But I saw not, and he saw not
  What shining life-tides flowed
To me-ward from his casual jot
  Of service on that road.
He would have said: “’Twas nothing new;
  We all do what we can;
’Twas only what one man would do
  For any other man.”
Now that I gauge his goodliness
  He’s slipped from human eyes;
And when he passed there’s none can guess,
  Or point out where he lies.