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C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

“Call Me Not Dead”

By Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909)

CALL me not dead when I, indeed, have gone

Into the company of the ever-living

High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving

Rather be made. Say:—“He at last hath won

Rest and release, converse supreme and wise,

Music and song and light of immortal faces;

To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places,

He hath met Keats, and known him by his eyes.

To-morrow (who can say?) Shakespeare may pass,

And our lost friend just catch one syllable

Of that three-centuried wit that kept so well;

Or Milton; or Dante, looking on the grass

Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still

To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill.”