“Song” (or “When I am dead, my dearest”)

This wasn’t what I had planned for today, but after a string of logistical and technical issues derailed my original idea, this was the right choice in the end. After screaming at my computer, some poetry was what I needed to calm me. Plus, I shot the footage in 2013, and I’m kinda glad I finally found a decent use for it.

“Song” (or “When I am dead, my dearest”) is a poem by Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894).

When I am dead, my dearest,
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.

• MUSIC: “Relaxing Piano Music” by Kevin MacLeod
  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Adam J. Manley

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Writer. Actor. Director. Chalk artist. YouTuber. Nerdfighter. Traveler. Pansexual. Genderfluid. Millennial. Socialist. Living a complex life beyond those words.