Song (Christina Rossetti)

I am posting this along with "Bright Star," by Keats, because both poems reflect some of my own thoughts about mortality and the impermanence of life. I know that after I am gone, I will be completely forgotten within a few years; and while this used to trouble me, it does so no longer. I hope I will have done something constructive and noble with my life, but the world will not stop for me, nor would I wish it to do so.

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.