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.  

I knew you best before I let you go. 

All the misapprehensions of the past

Dissipated in an hour or so.

Naked to the human eye you lay 

Candid as a cadaver on the couch I could have slept on, but I went away 

Ashamed to stay, afraid almost to touch. 

Lost, you seemed the only vivid thing 

In a world made moribund and flat 

By worldliness. Renunciations bring 

Their own reward, apparently, like that 

Last look of yours, ironical or tender, 

A valediction and a benediction, 

Which endless reruns will not soon surrender, 

The indispensable, improper fiction 

Of your unforgettable perfection. 

She sat without the grated den,

Watching how my fate would tend,

Even as selfish-hearted men. 

She was cruel in her fear;

Through the bars, one dreary day,

I looked out to see her there,

And she turned her face away! 

Like a false guard, false watch keeping,

Still, in strife, she whispered peace;

She would sing while I was weeping;

If I listened, she would cease. 

False she was, and unrelenting;

When my last joys strewed the ground,

Even Sorrow saw, repenting,

Those sad relics scattered round; 

Hope, whose whisper would have given

Balm to all my frenzied pain,

Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,

Went, and ne'er returned again!