Death and Mourning

Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated.

The bright day is done, And we are for the dark.

He dies, and makes no sign.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world.

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

Who knows but life be that which men call death, And death what men call life?

The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Had I but died an hour before this chance I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant, There’s nothing serious in mortality, All is but toys; renown and grace is dead, The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.

Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high, Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.

To live a life half dead, a living death.

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry: For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return!

What if this present were the world’s last night?

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he.

The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.

A poet lies, or that which once seemed he— Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C.! That he, who many a year, with toil of breath, Found death in life, may here find life in death.

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, The nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal!

While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

Her cabined, ample spirit It fluttered and failed for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.