Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Aubrey Thomas De Vere b. 1814

An Epicurean’s Epitaph

WHEN from my lips the last faint sigh is blown

By Death, dark waver of Lethean plumes,

O! press not then with monumental stone

This forehead smooth, nor weigh me down with glooms

From green bowers, gray with dew,

Of Rosemary and Rue.

Choose for my bed some bath of sculptur’d marble

Wreath’d with gay nymphs; and lay me—not alone—

Where sunbeams fall, flowers wave, and light birds warble,

To those who lov’d me murmuring in soft tone,

“Here lies our friend, from pain secure and cold;

And spreads his limbs in peace under the sun-warm’d mould!”