To a Child
WHENAS my life shall time with funeral treadThe heavy death-drum of the beaten hours,Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead,Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers;When I you love am no more I you love,But go with unsubservient feet, beholdYour dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;—A new man, mockèd with misname of old;When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf!When, ceremented in mouldering memory,Myself is hearsèd underneath myself,And I am but the monument of me:—O to that tomb be tender then, which bearsOnly the name of him it sepulchres!