Death and Mourning

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

 

Like shadows of the plumbing that is all that is left of the great city.

 

The dead will think the living are worth it we will know Who we are And we will all enlist again.

 

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day.

 

There with vast wings across the canceled skies, There in the sudden blackness the black pall Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

 

Petersburg! I still possess a list of addresses, Which will help me to hear the voices of the dead.

 

Build then the ship of death, for you must take the longest journey, to oblivion.

 

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark.

 

When I am dead and over me bright April Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Though you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care.

 

There is not room for Death.

 

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, ’Tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, With courage to endure.

 

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers From those brown hills have melted into spring.

 

I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.

 

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.

 

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark.

 

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.

 

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapors weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.

 

She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

 

Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.

 

Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

 

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of death Rode the six hundred.

 

Speak no more of his renown. Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him. God accept him, Christ receive him.

 

The last great Englishman is low.

 

O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fall’n at length, that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.