Does it help to be dead before you are read...

In your sodden grave with the sod overhead?

Is eternity the place to be

Before the world says that's for me?

Will it help fame to find your rhyme

If you're hauled to your tomb before your time?

In death to strike a deathless pose

While a newly-wise world admires your prose.

If that's the way it's going to be

Posterity can wait on me.

But if I'm gone with no name and no brass,

Posterity may come ...to pass!