Death and Mourning

He hath awakened from the dream of life.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world’s slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain.

In mockery of monumental stone.

The Pilgrim of Eternity [Lord Byron], whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal!

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.

A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

To that high capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!

I weep for Adonais [John Keats] 4 —he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

What! alive, and so bold, O earth?

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher.

Death is the veil which those who live call life: They sleep, and it is lifted. 1

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

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me.

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep—that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.

Seek out—less often sought than found— A soldier’s grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest.

What, silent still? and silent all? Ah! no;—the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent’s fall.

Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.