Explore "If I Should Die" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
RONDEAU.
If I should die, how kind you all would grow! / In that strange hour I would not have one foe. / There are no words too beautiful to say / Of one who goes forevermore away / Across that ebbing tide which has no flow.
With what new lustre my good deeds would glow! / If faults were mine, no one would call them so, / Or speak of me in aught but praise that day, / If I should die.
Ah, friends! before my listening ear lies low, / While I can hear and understand, bestow / That gentle treatment and fond love, I pray, / The lustre of whose late though radiant way / Would gild my grave with mocking light, I know, / If I should die.