Death and Mourning

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

 

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.

 

Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says; “I am coming.”

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers From those brown hills have melted into spring.

 

I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.

He hath awakened from the dream of life.

All men think all men mortal but themselves.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, The bed be blest that I lie on. Four angels to my bed, Four angels round my head, 1 One to watch, and one to pray, And two to bear my soul away.

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good: I am a God and cannot find it there.

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, Dream of battled fields no more, Days of danger, nights of waking.

Ferdinand: Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. Bosola: I think not so; her infelicity

See that little stream—we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk it—a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs.

When I am dead, my dearest,

Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.

And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

When Abraham Lincoln was murdered

What though before us lies the open grave?

As he saw it, there was only one choice—to be strong and upright, or to commit suicide.

Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. 2

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak’d meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Ere I had ever seen that day.

Unless I’m wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I’m—bound—away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died.