Death and Mourning

In her sepulcher there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece The hollow horn plays wasted words Proves to warn That he not busy being born Is busy dying.

Even death is unreliable: instead of zero it may be some ghastly hallucination, such as the square root of minus one.

But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These laid the world away; poured out the red

There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

In the long run we are all dead.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Finality is death. Perfection is finality.

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;

I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.

Must not all things at last be swallowed up in Death?

One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa-- blessing it rather than in love with it.

Some men are born posthumously.

Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

I found myself thinking with intense curiosityabout death. Yet if I’m persuaded of anything, it is of mortality—Then why this sense that death is going to be a great excitement?—somethingpositive, active?

Death is the end of life; ah, why

 

Hell is the bloodcurdling mansion of time, in whose profoundest circle Satan himself waits, winding a gargantuan watch in his hand.

And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

 

The crime of suicide lies in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind. E. M.