This wakeful death affords not any rift
where root of weed or blossom cleaves the tomb.
Ungrown as yet, no yewen bowers lift,
bringing serene misericordal gloom
upon this sepulture adjust and bare,
writ with a legend plain to one alone
whose voice could quicken the unvital air,
recalling Lazarus from his room of stone.
Oblivion's river flows in other lands
than this where memory feeds a mordant spring:
the walking dead beseech with parching hands
the cool, far shadow of the raven's wing;
and, leaning from the mouldered bed of lust,
love's skeleton writes Nada in the dust.