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I ask not that my bed of death / From bands of greedy heirs be free; / For these besiege the latest breath / Of fortune's favour'd sons, not me.
I ask not each kind soul to keep / Tearless, when of my death he hears; / Let those who will, if any, weep!
There are worse plagues on earth than tears.
I ask but that my death may find / The freedom to my life denied; / Ask but the folly of mankind / Then, then at last, to quit my side.
Spare me the whispering, crowded room, / The friends who come, and gape, and go; / The ceremonious air of gloom --
All, which makes death a hideous show!
Nor bring, to see me cease to live, / Some doctor full of phrase and fame, / To shake his sapient head and give / The ill he cannot cure a name.
Nor fetch, to take the accustom'd toll / Of the poor sinner bound for death, / His brother doctor of the soul, / To canvass with official breath / The future and its viewless things --
That undiscover'd mystery / Which one who feels death's winnowing wings / Must needs read clearer, sure, than he!
Bring none of these! but let me be, / While all around in silence lies, / Moved to the window near, and see / Once more, before my dying eyes / Bathed in the sacred dews of morn / The wide aerial landscape spread --
The world which was ere I was born, / The world which lasts when I am dead.
Which never was the friend of one, / Nor promised love it could not give, / But lit for all its generous sun, / And lived itself, and made us live.
There let me gaze, till I become / In soul with what I gaze on wed!
To feel the universe my home; / To have before my mind -- instead / Of the sick-room, the mortal strife, / The turmoil for a little breath --
The pure eternal course of life, / Not human combatings with death.
Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow / Composed, refresh'd, ennobled, clear; / Then willing let my spirit go / To work or wait elsewhere or here!