Death and Mourning

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.

 

Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.

Petersburg! I still possess a list of addresses, Which will help me to hear the voices of the dead.

 

Abortions will not let you forget.

Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.

I shouldered a kind of manhood stepping in to lift the coffins of dead relations.

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Mankind, fleet of life, like tree leaves, weak creatures of clay, unsubstantial as shadows, wingless, ephemeral, wretched, mortal and dreamlike.

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue… he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master

I take the word Europe Or the word death And tear them into tiny pieces; I scatter them at your feet.

Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.

[ Her suggested epitaph for herself :] Excuse My Dust.

“Tell them that I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,” he said.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark.

 

Death has got something to be said for it: There’s no need to get out of bed for it; Wherever you may be, They bring it to you, free.

I am dying, as I have lived, beyond my means.

Human beings . . . they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It’s kind of boring, isn’t it?

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

 

[ On being warned by her doctor that if she didn’t stop drinking she would be dead within a month :] Promises, promises!

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

Black are the horses. The horseshoes are black. On the dark capes glisten stains of ink and of wax. Their skulls are leaden, which is why they don’t weep. With their patent leather souls they come down the street.

Let me die a youngman’s death

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail.

No wreaths please— especially no hothouse flowers. Some common memento is better, something he prized and is known by: his old clothes—a few books perhaps.