An Epicurean's Epitaph by Aubrey Thomas De Vere. Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. 1895. A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895

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

An Epicurean’s Epitaph

Aubrey Thomas De Vere (b. 1814)


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,	5
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,	10
“Here lies our friend, from pain secure and cold;
And spreads his limbs in peace under the sun-warm’d mould!”