How do the people mourn, when poets die?

Where do bards go, if they perish in their sleep?

And, when heaven and hell together weep,

do angels and demons make pause and sigh,

to raise them to their new homes in the sky

where the sun never dies, and the stars sweep

the hemisphered earth in night's moonless steep

(where they might dwell) and with songs beautify?

May monuments, and shields, be erected;

and eulogies delivered in rich prose;

may their odes to country be perfected,

while in marble sepulchres they decompose:

for poets laureate it's expected,

whilst in decline nations feel their death throes.

By Ngoc Nguyen

From: United States