To A Child

WHENAS my life shall time with funeral tread The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; When I you love am no more I you love, But go with unsubservient feet, behold Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;— A new man, mockèd with misname of old; When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! When, ceremented in mouldering memory, Myself is hearsèd underneath myself, And I am but the monument of me:— O to that tomb be tender then, which bears Only the name of him it sepulchres!