Death and Mourning

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

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me— The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality.

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night— We talked between the Rooms— Until the Moss had reached our lips— And covered up—our names—

It was not Death, for I stood up, And all the Dead, lie down—

I died for Beauty—but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining Room—

After great pain, a formal feeling comes.

What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb! Let the victors, when they come, When the forts of folly fall, Find thy body by the wall.

Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

Her cabined, ample spirit It fluttered and failed for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!

O Death, old captain, it is time! raise the anchor! 9

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world; For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead.

Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself, Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.