Classic Poem

No gypsy born of the old, true blood
Dies between walls of stone or wood;
They are too courteous to Death
To bid him come for that last breath
Through a low door to a mean space
Unfitted to his rank and grace.

But when their hour is come to die
They room between the ground and sky;
On shore or meadow, hill or heath
They wait the gracious hand of Death;
From a free place to open skies
They rise with him as the larks rise.

God grant that in no narrow room
Death peers at me through curtained gloom;
But somewhere in the first, fresh dawn
Green be the hill I lie upon,
And let Death come to me as one
With the wind and the dew and the lifting sun.