University of Virginia Library

DEAREST, when I am dead,
Fold not this form of mine
In webs of wool or silk or linen fine;
Nay, pillow not my head,
When there is no more breath in me, on down
Nor my cold brows with flowers funereal crown.
Coffin me not in epicedial elm;
Let them not seal
My slumbering sense with straitening bands nor whelm
My weary body in sepulchral steel.
Be not my breathless breast
With the accurséd winding-sheet opprest;
Let them not lap my nerveless limbs in lead
Nor nail me down,
Wound, like a wine-flask, in some woolly fleece,
Within the choking chest.
Indeed, I could not rest,
Enchained and prisoned in that narrow bed;
I could not sleep
Until the term of time be oversped
Nor slumber out the appointed years in peace,
If left to strangle in that darkling deep.

Lay me not in the ground,
In some sad city of the nameless dead,
Whose heaped-up hosts should let me from the light,
Where all about me, under, overhead,
Their million multitudes, untold, unknown,
Encompassing me round,
Pressing and crowding on me day and night,
To all eternity should elbow me
And straiten me beneath my funeral stone.
Enough in life it was with men to be,
To see
Their smileless faces pass me in the ways,
To meet
Their senseless eyes, wherein my wistful gaze
Could note no noble heat,
No hope of heavenly things, no care of right,
No heed of aught that is not bought and sold,
No thought, no wish, except the greed of gold.
Fain in my death from them I would be free.
Let them not mar the eternal rest for me,
Enforcing me the unvictorious fight
Fight on and on for all eternity,
Who hunger for deliverance at last
From the base present and the bitter past.

Not in the earth me lay:
I would not moulder lingeringly away
Within the stifling clay
Nor cower helpless in corruption's hold,
Midmost the darkness and the nether cold,
A prison-palsied prey
To the mean creatures of the middle earth.
I would not have my rottenness affray
Each delicate flower-birth
And cause it shun my foulness of decay.
I could not brook to think
The lilies or the violets should shrink
From my pollution, leaving the fat weed
And the base creatures that corruptions breed
Alone upon my festering flesh to feed,
Nor that the primrose or the cowslip's root,
Delving with dainty foot
In the earth's bosom for its sustenance,
Should flinch and shrivel from my funeral stance,
Deeming my mouldering dust not fair and good
Enough to be its food.

Nay, leave me overground;
Let me not lie to perish and to pine
Under the mould in some sepulchral mound;
But lay me, leave me in the open air;
On some wild moorland or some mountain bare,
Upon Helvellyn's crown or Snowdon's chine
Cast down these bones of mine.
There let me moulder underneath the skies;
Let the birds batten on my brain and eyes,
The wild fox tear me and the forest swine.
Yea, let me wither in the wind and rain;
The air shall purge me and the sun from stain;
The rains shall wash away
The soil of death, defilement and decay
And the breeze blow me clean and pure and white:
Nothing shall be in me to soil the sight,
To fright the fancy or the sense affray.
The winds shall be the playmates of my dust,
As in the air they waft it near and far;
The grass its spear-spikes through my ribs shall thrust
And the sweet influences of night and day
Look loving on me, sun and moon and star.
Yea, better far to wither in the wind,
To wait the fulness of the days assigned,
In the fair face of sky and stars and sun,
To feed the flying and the faring things,
The creatures in the grass that creep and run,
To scatter on the birds' and breezes' wings,
To mingle with the sunshiné and the rain
And with my breeze-borne ashes germ on germ
Of herb and grass and weed
To birth of beauty ever and again
To bring and help to harvest grain and seed,
Than in the clay to moulder, heart and brain,
The creatures of corruption there to breed,
To rot out tediously the ruthless term
And in the dark to feed
The foul blind beetle and the writhing worm.

There, in the sight of sky and moon and sun,
The elements shall garner, one by one,
Each gift, each grace they gave,
To make this body brave;
Let the four work-mates, earth, fire, water, air,
Resume again from me
That which I had of them and leave me bare;
Let all my parts again be what they were,
Before the fiat fell for me to be.

There, in the course of many a day and night,
Some gentian of the height,
Some rose, belike, shall blossom from my clay;
Some amaryllis of the wind-swept hills,
Some pansy, purple as the morning's sills,
Some fragrant flush of meadow-sweet, some white
Celestial lily of the morning-light,
Borne, yet in germ, upon the gracious gale,
Whereas I waste away,
The fragrances of wordless wistfulness
And longing love shall smell,
The overmastering spell
Of passion disembodied and desire
Purged and made pure of life's polluting stress
Mark, that my ashes on the air exhale,
Nor their sweet seeds and frail
Fear to the bosom of my love to trust,
Electing so to blossom from my dust
And their fair brightness found in my decay.

So shall I one anew
Be with the natural things I held so dear,
One with the sunshine and the waters clear,
One with the larks and linnets, flowers and grass,
Mountain and moor and torrent, herb and tree,
The candid creatures of the air and dew.
Nay, in the days to be,
It peradventure yet may come to pass
That, as your free foot strays
Along the moorland or the mountain-ways,
Noting the shadows in the brooklet's glass
Or following on the interlacing rays
That chase each other through the tangled trees,
Mayhap it shall be yours to recognize
My spirit in the bird-notes and the breeze,
My face in flowers, my thought in butterflies,
The subtle scions of the sun and skies:
Belike, some wandering breath
Of perfume, in the summer air afloat,
Shall to your senses speak of me in death:
Yea, by the brooklet straying, you shall note
Some bloom of gold and blue,
Some riverside ranunculus, of me
That haply shall remember you, shall see
Some flowering weed look on you with my eyes
Or hear
Some windwaft murmur of me in your ear,
Some birdsong answer with my speech to you.