Death and Mourning

The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga, Her bare Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over.

He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back. He thought they were old friends.

Life is the desert, life the solitude;

Methought I saw my late espousèd saint

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you didn’t see him do it.

Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:

There is not room for Death.

 

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.

Build then the ship of death, for you must take the longest journey, to oblivion.

 

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said:

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

I’d like to die like this… with the dark fingers of the water closing and unclosing over these sleepy lights and a sad bell somewhere murmuring good night.

That was a time when only the dead could smile.

“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said. But there The silver answer rang—“Not Death, but Love.”

These external regions, what do we fill them with Except reflections, the escapades of death, Cinderella fulfilling herself beneath the roof.

Let be be finale of seem.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

The dead don’t die. They look on and help.

 

One day Lara went out and did not come back. . . . She died or vanished somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list which was afterwards mislaid.

Seal with a righteous kiss

 

No doubt the nearness of death and the brotherhood of men-at-arms, at whatever time and in whatever country, always produces an atmosphere favorable to the extraordinary, to all that rises above the human condition and breaks the circle of solitude that surrounds each one of us.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever lasting.