How strange a couch they strewed thee there,
A stone the coverlid,
And bade me write a verse thereon
In memory of thy shade.
Oh! people! people! hearts of stone,
Here take my heart among you,
Be graven on the funeral slab,
What yet I have not sung you.
My living love ye trusted not,
My words were for your jeering,
Now shall the stones cry out on you,
And win my words a hearing.
VI.
When to the earth I yield my dust,
My soul to God from whom it came,
I pray that I may buried be,
As best befits a poet’s fame.
Around my brows the laurel wreath,
And lodge the lyre within my hands,
That my new neighbours well may know,
Who entereth last their silent lands.
Sacred to me my lyre hath been,
And not the plaything of an hour,
Then let it rest upon my breast,
When death’s long shadows lower.
