And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth
And form so soft and charm so rare Too soon returned to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed
And o’er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth
There is an eye which could not brook A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low, Nor gaze upon the spot
There flowers or weeds at will may grow
So I behold them not
It is enough for me to prove
That what I loved, and long must love
Like common earth can rot
To me there needs no stone to tell ‘Tis Nothing that I loved so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last
As fervently as thou
Who didst not change through all the past
And canst not alter now..
The love where Death has set his seal
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal
Nor falsehood disavow
And, what were worse, thou canst not see or wrong or change or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours
The worst can be but mine
The sun that cheers, the storm that lours
Shall never more be thine..
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep
Nor need I to repine
That all those charms have passed away
I might have watched through long decay.

The flower in ripened bloom unmatched
Must fall the earliest prey
Though by no hand untimely snatched
The leaves must drop away
And yet it were a greater grief
To watct it withering, leaf by leaf
Than see it plucked today
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade
The night that followed such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade
Thy day without a cloud hath past
And thou wert lovely to the last—extinguished, not decayed
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep
My tears might well be shed
To think I was not near to keep one vigil o’er thy bed
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face
To fold thee in a faint embrace
Uphold thy drooping head
And show that love, however vain
Nor thou nor I can feel again.

Yet how much less it were to gain
Though thou hast left me free
The loveliest things that still remain
Than thus remember thee! The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread
Eternity Returns again to me
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught, except its living years.

By Lord George Gordon Byron.