Deface with their slow dropping my sad tomb
Lest your grey head grow greyer for my doom
And fill ts 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 sings and sears.
Already I can hear the stealthy tread
Of sorrow breaking through the heart 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.