Death and Mourning

She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

 

Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

 

Speak no more of his renown. Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him. God accept him, Christ receive him.

 

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of death Rode the six hundred.

 

O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fall’n at length, that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.

 

The last great Englishman is low.

 

Bury the Great Duke With an empire’s lamentation.

 

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side?

 

How fares it with the happy dead?

 

And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

 

Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

 

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

 

Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease.

 

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.

 

No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.

 

She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

 

There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

 

Yisterday fair up sprang the flouris, This day thai are all slane with schouris; And fowles in forrest that sang cleir Now walkis with a drery cheir; Full caild are baith thair beddis and bouris.

 

I that in heill wes and gladnes Am trublit now with gret seiknes And feblit with infermite: Timor Mortis conturbat me. 1

 

Death is the enemy. . . . Against you I willfling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, ODeath!

I found myself thinking with intense curiosityabout death. Yet if I’m persuaded of anything, it is of mortality—Then why this sense that death is going to be a great excitement?—somethingpositive, active?

The dead don’t stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the pleasures they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved. They get weaned away from earth—that’s the way I put it—weaned away.

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

So it goes.