Death and Mourning

Sunset and evening star,

 

Home they brought her warrior dead.

 

To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the blasts, the sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that shadow of a man which we call his reputation.

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.

The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, is—to die.

Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden.

Toll for the brave— The brave! that are no more; All sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore!

I am the somber one, the unconsoled widower, The Prince of Aquitaine whose tower was destroyed. 2 My only star is dead, and my star-studded lute Wears the black sun of Melancholy.

Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night’s sweet bird.

Death is the veil which those who live call life: They sleep, and it is lifted. 1

Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away?

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.

So we keep asking, over and over, Until a handful of earth Stops our mouths— But is that an answer?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep—that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.

Keeping the rhythm in their dancing As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling. Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.

Solomon Grundy, Born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday: This is the end Of Solomon Grundy.

He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odor of death Offends the September night.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist