Death and Mourning

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

I could not look on Death, which being known, Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

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

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.

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.

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

As dust that drives, as straws that blow, Into the night go one and all.

It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? My duty all ended, Who have watched his mold of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome, Pining, pining.

That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgment Day.

Sleeping at last, the trouble and turmoil over, Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past, Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover, Sleeping at last.

Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land.

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree. Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember And if thou wilt, forget.

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.

The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth— The Sweeping up the Heart, And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity.

The Dying, is a trifle, past But living, this include The dying multifold—without The Respite to be dead.

But never met this Fellow Attended or alone Without a tighter breathing And Zero at the Bone—

Love—is anterior to Life— Posterior—to Death— Initial of Creation, and The Exponent of Earth.

Dying! To be afraid of thee One must to thine Artillery Have left exposed a Friend— Than thine old Arrow is a Shot Delivered straighter to the Heart The leaving Love behind.