Death and Mourning

After sixty years the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal about it.

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

Most persons have died before they expire—died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

In the dust where we have buried the silent races and their abominations we have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

In this life there’s nothing new in dying,

 

Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee.

 

Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming.

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

 

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

 

Home they brought her warrior dead.

 

Dear as remembered kisses after death.

 

Death is the end of life; ah, why

 

There hath he lain for ages and will lie

 

God’s finger touched him, and he slept.

 

Authority forgets a dying king.

 

Sunset and evening star,

 

For though from out our bourne of time and place

 

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

 

Seal with a righteous kiss

 

Death lies on her like an untimely frost.

 

Give me my Romeo: and, when he shall die,

 

I shall fall

 

I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument?