I immediately start thinking of Anne Morrow Lindberg's classic book Gift from the Sea. Another poem I also think of is "Fear" by Gabriela Mistral. Kilmer's poem, especially 13-16, are ready-made for tombstones. "My heart shall keep the child I knew/When you are really gone from me,/And spend its life remembering you/As shells remember the lost sea." This is a poem from a mother's heart, where grief has pierced it beyond the presenthour. It's the brief moments she clings to, and then must acknowledge the brevity of the precious life that was given to her in the form of the child. Lines 11-12 tug at the visual, "A mist about your beauty clings/Like a thin cloud before a star."
