This poem was included in the original 1915 edition.
THEY have chiseled on my stone the words: "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him That nature might stand up and say to all the world, This was a man." Those who knew me smile As they read this empty rhetoric. My epitaph should have been: "Life was not gentle to him, And the elements so mixed in him That he made warfare on life In the which he was slain." While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph Graven by a fool!
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Sarah Shalaby , 5 months ago
This is a very nice one,indeed. I've always thought that the dead would almost never agree to what their epitaphs said.