When I am dead— Place tall slim candles at my foot and head; And purple velvet let my background be. Then let them sing a haunting melody— The Rosary—And let the organ moan The funeral dirge of Chopin. Let no groan Of wounded flowers screaming with dull pain Disturb my distant dream. Oh, let the rain Caress these hurt young things in some lone glade Where they can neither wither nor can fade. And then—remove me from these haunts of men And take me to some smiling sunlit glen; Some windy fastness of a tear-dimmed pool Where muffled winds blow free and the dim cool Stars sing a silent song to me. There fling My ashes to the sun. Oh, let them cling To the four winds and spill them in the moon— Her painted face in a forlorn lagoon. Oh, God—let me thus be wooed, Locked in sacred solitude. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CAMPUS SONNET: RETURN - 1917 by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET LONELY BURIAL by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET WE FACE THE FUTURE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TWO POEMS FROM THE WAR: 1 by ARCHIBALD MACLEISH |