One of my favorite short stories is “Requiem,” by Robert Heinlein. (It’s actually a sequel to “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” another of my favorites.) The title of the short story comes from the title of a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the poem is quoted in the story. Maybe it’s just because of the association with the story, but I’ve always liked this poem.
Since the poem is no longer copyrighted, I can reproduce it here:
Requiem
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
This poem is engraved on Robert Louis Stevenson’s tombstone in Samoa.