When I am Dead
When I am dead let not your murderous tears
Deface with their slow dropping my sad tomb
Lest your grey head grow greyer for my doom
And fill its echoing corridors with fears:
Your heart that my stone monument appears
While yet I live -- O give it not to gloom
When I am dead, but let some joy illume
The ultimate Victory that stings and sears.
Already I can hear the stealthy tread
Of sorrow breaking through the hush of day;
I have no hope you will avert my dread,
Too well I know, that soon am mixed with clay,
They mourn the body who the spirit slay
And those that stab the living weep the dead.
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