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by Benjamin Franklin King (1857 - 1894)

If I Should Die
Language: English 
If I should die to-night
And you should come to my cold corpse and say,
Weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay--
If I should die to-night,
And you should come in deepest grief and woe--
And say: "Here's that ten dollars that I owe,"
I might arise in my large white cravat
And say, "What's that?"

If I should die to-night
And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel,
Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel,
I say, if I should die to-night
And you should come to me, and there and then
Just even hint 'bout payin' me that ten,
I might arise the while,
But I'd drop dead again.

Text Authorship:

  • by Benjamin Franklin King (1857 - 1894) [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Gary Bachlund (b. 1947), "If I Should Die", 2005 [tenor and piano], from The Sum of Life, no. 1 [ sung text checked 1 time]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2007-05-02
Line count: 16
Word count: 116

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