Death and Mourning

Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns on water, or but writes in dust.

The world’s a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.

O God! Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.

Lay her i’ the earth; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!

The end crowns all, And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it.

Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. 57

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits. 1

Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.

All human things are subject to decay, And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

Vital spark of heav’nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, Easy live and quiet die.

He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely.

“Pass in, pass in,” the angels say, “In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.”

Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night— We talked between the Rooms— Until the Moss had reached our lips— And covered up—our names—

It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

“Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.