When All Is Done

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When all is done, and my last word is said,
  And ye who loved me murmur, "He is dead,"
  Let no one weep, for fear that I should know,
  And sorrow too that ye should sorrow so.

  When all is done and in the oozing clay,
  Ye lay this cast-off hull of mine away,
  Pray not for me, for, after long despair,
  The quiet of the grave will be a prayer.

  For I have suffered loss and grievous pain,
  The hurts of hatred and the world's disdain,
  And wounds so deep that love, well-tried and pure,
  Had not the pow'r to ease them or to cure.

  When all is done, say not my day is o'er,
  And that thro' night I seek a dimmer shore:
  Say rather that my morn has just begun,--
  I greet the dawn and not a setting sun,
  When all is done.

© Paul Laurence Dunbar