Death and Mourning

I wish to leave the world By its natural door; In my tomb of green leaves They are to carry me to die. Do not put me in the dark To die like a traitor; I am good, and like a good thing I will die with my face to the sun.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

We are condemned to kill time: Thus we die bit by bit

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

If any man thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die.

If I should die, think only this of me:

Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

The fever called ‘Living’

There died a myriad,

I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.

Suicide: a belated acquiescence in the opinion of one’s wife’s relatives.

There hath he lain for ages and will lie

 

I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument?

 

Dear as remembered kisses after death.

 

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.

 

After sixty years the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal about it.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

In this life there’s nothing new in dying,

 

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is— I hold it towards you.

This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies And Lads and Girls— Was laughter and ability and Sighing, And Frocks and Curls.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly; if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come.