Sunday Poetry - Lord Byron

This is Byron (picture from here) in true Byronic mode. Tombs, graves, noxious nightshade, fond breast heaving a parting sigh & death. Written in 1818 & published after the poet's death, it's Romantic & romantic if a bit over the top.

If I forsake thee, early be my tomb,
My bed untended, and unwept my doom;
Around my grave let no fresh verdure spring,
No plaintive bird within its precincts sing;
Let no fair flower adorn my turfy bed,
No violets spring, no roses life their head;
But there let weeds, and noxious nightshade thrive;
There only what to life is fatal, live:
So shall mankind avoid the hated place,
Shunned and detested by the brutal race;
All bu the shrieking owl, and bat obscene,
Shall fly the relics of a thing so mean.


But if, as Heaven is witness, such shall be,
Death only can divorce my heart from thee;
If this fond breast shall heave its parting sigh,
Loth only, as 'tis leaving thee, to die;
The let affliction drop the pious tear,
The tribute sacred to the heart sincere:
Let no the gaudy pomps of seeming woe,
The paltry debt that pride to pride may owe - 
Let, while surviving summers still are thine,
Let all thy thoughts, thy tenderest thoughts, be mine;
And when thy peaceful course fulfilled in this,
The fate shall call thee to the world of bliss,
In one sepulchral mansion let us rest,
By the same simple grassy tomb compressed;
Let mingling urns our mutual loves requite,
And death which parted once, once more unite.