Death and Mourning

I shall but love thee better after death.

Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.

Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland.

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying.

 

What once was cuddled must learn to kiss/The cold worm’s mouth. That’s all the mystery.

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,

 

Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road.

At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.

Because I could not stop for Death—

Like shadows of the plumbing that is all that is left of the great city.

 

Can storied urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust, Or flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

The true tomb of the dead is the heart of the living.

There with vast wings across the canceled skies, There in the sudden blackness the black pall Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

 

He watched, stunned, and while he was watching, Rick died. He could tell when it happened. There was a difference.

 

—And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles seventeen years ago come March.

As the dead prey upon us, they are the dead in ourselves, awake, my sleeping ones, I cry out to you, disentangle the nets of being!

Nous autres, civilisations, nous savons maintenant que nous sommes mortelles .

And if tonight my soul may find her peace

 

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree. Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember And if thou wilt, forget.

We shall die alone.

When I reflect upon the number ofdisagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

Soldiers! When it is announced that a respected and beloved leader has died for our freedom in the course of a battle, do not grieve, do not lose hope! Observe that anyone who dies for his country is a fortunate man, but death takes what it wants, indiscriminately, in peacetime as well as in war. It is better to die with freedom than without it.