They have Chiseled on my stone the words: 'His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.' Those who knew me smile As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been: 'Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain.' While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph Graven by a fool!
