Death Sonnet

That hour will come at last my breath to take.
Forlorn the hope to void Death’s certain bond!
He will not suffer me a breach to make,
he holds me fast in much too firm a hand.
And yet I know that when my life is void,
still will the stalwart sun pursue his course;
and when my bones are ’neath the sod low laid,
seasons will flow according to those laws
which surely fix the bloom and fall of all
who live and die beneath the austere sky.
Therefore, I plead, when I must heed that call
should linger here, not as a whiff of smoke off fly,
some remnant of the being that once was me
my case, dread Fate, I now consign with thee.