The Poetry Corner

Vixit

By John Le Gay Brereton

Nurse not your grief, nor make obsequious moan When I have shed this flesh I love so well, Nor slowly toll the dull heart-bruising knell, Nor carve my name in customary stone; But let the generous earth reclaim her own And my usurious profit who can tell? Dash tears aside, let joy resume her spell; Stars glitter where the storm is overblown. Because I have lived I would not have one say: Here long ago a man of such a name Was left to moulder in his pit of clay. Let only love remember how I came And built an earthen altar in my day And lit thereon a comfortable flame.