Death and Mourning

One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother’s grave?

And mighty poets in their misery dead.

He 2 pass’d the flaming bounds of place and time: The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble, while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. 1

What, silent still? and silent all? Ah! no;—the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent’s fall.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

The only secret people keep Is Immortality.

My life closed twice before its close— It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

I died for Beauty—but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining Room—

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me— The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality.

One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.

At my dying hour, and over my long life, A clock strikes somewhere at the city’s edge.

The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

The communication

All human things are subject to decay,

Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know,

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Death of a salesman.

We come out of the dark and go into the dark again, and in between lie the experiences of our life.

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.