Byron's Poetical Works, Volume 1

When, to their airy hall, my Fathers’ voice Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, pois’d upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain’s side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptur’d urns, To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!  No lengthen’d scroll, no praise-encumber’d stone; [i] My epitaph shall be my name alone:  [2] If that with honour fail to crown my clay, [ii] Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember’d, or with that forgot.

1803.

[Footnote 1:  There is no heading in the Quarto.]

[Footnote 2:  In his will, drawn up in 1811, Byron gave directions that “no inscription, save his name and age, should be written on his tomb.”  June, 1819, he wrote to Murray:  “Some of the epitaphs at the Certosa cemetery, at Ferrara, pleased me more than the more splendid monuments at Bologna; for instance, ‘Martini Luigi Implora pace.’  Can anything be more full of pathos?  I hope whoever may survive me will see those two words, and no more, put over me.”—­’Life’, pp. 131, 398.]

[Footnote:  i.

  ‘No lengthen’d scroll of virtue and renown.’

[4to.  P. on V. Occ.]]

[Footnote:  ii.

  ‘If that with honour fails,’

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[Footnote:  iii.

  ‘But that remember’d, or fore’er forgot’.

[4to.  ’P. on V. Occasions’.]]