This is the night when I must die, + 

And great Orion walketh high + 

In silent glory overhead: + 

He’ll set just after I am dead. + 

A week this night, I’m in my grave: + 

Orion walketh o’er the wave: + 

Down in the dark damp earth I lie, + 

While he doth march in majesty. + 

A few weeks hence and spring will come; + 

The earth will bright array put on + 

Of daisy and of primrose bright, + 

And everything which loves the light. + 

And someone to my child will say, + 

“You’ll soon forget that you could play + 

Beethoven; let us hear a strain + 

From that slow movement once again.” + 

And so she’ll play that melody, + 

While I among the worms do lie; + 

Dead to them all, forever dead; + 

The churchyard clay dense overhead. + 

I once did think there might be mine + 

One friendship perfect and divine; + 

Alas! that dream dissolved in tears + 

Before I’d counted twenty years. + 

For I was ever commonplace; + 

Of genius never had a trace; + 

My thoughts the world have never fed, + 

Mere echoes of the book last read. + 

Those whom I knew I cannot blame: + 

If they are cold, I am the same: + 

How could they ever show to me + 

More than a common courtesy? + 

There is no deed which I have done; + 

There is no love which I have won, + 

To make them for a moment grieve + 

That I this night their earth must leave. + 

Thus, moaning at the break of day, + 

A man upon his deathbed lay; + 

A moment more and all was still; + 

The Morning Star came o’er the hill. + 

But when the dawn lay on his face, + 

It kindled an immortal grace; + 

As if in death that Life were shown + 

Which lives not in the great alone. + 

Orion sank down in the west + 

Just as he sank into his rest; + 

I closed in solitude his eyes, + 

And watched him till the sun’s uprise. + 