Death and Mourning

’Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give No hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive.

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life’s page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonor’d his relics are laid.

And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.

A poet lies, or that which once seemed he— Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C.! That he, who many a year, with toil of breath, Found death in life, may here find life in death.

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, The nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout The death fires danced at night.

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald.

Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, Easy live and quiet die.

Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou art gone, and forever!

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.

And come he slow, or come he fast, It is but Death who comes at last.

The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

And mighty poets in their misery dead.

One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother’s grave?

A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: 2 A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

One great society alone on earth: The noble Living and the noble Dead.

_______ A simple child, 1 That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

But, oh! fell death’s untimely frost, That nipt my flower sae early.

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry ’weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep! So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

O’er all the hilltops Is quiet now, In all the treetops Hearest thou Hardly a breath; The birds are asleep in the trees: Wait; soon like these Thou too shalt rest. 16