Early Death
by Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862)

Oh grieve not with thy bitter tears
The life that passes fast;
The gates of heaven will open wide
And take me in at last.

Then sit down meekly at my side
And watch my young life flee;
Then solemn peace of holy death
Come quickly unto thee.

But true love, seek me in the throng
Of spirits floating past,
And I will take thee by the hands
And know thee mine at last.

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Verses for an Album
by Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white,
A young probationer of light,
Thou wert, my soul, an Album bright.

A spotless leaf; but thought, and care—
And friends and foes, in foul or fair,
Have “written strange defeature” there.

And time, with heaviest hand of all,
Like that fierce writing on the wall,
Hath stamp’d sad dates—he can’t recall.

And error, gilding worst designs—
Like speckled snake that strays and shines—
Betrays his path by crooked lines.

And vice hath left his ugly blot;
And good resolves, a moment hot,
Fairly began—but finished not.

A fruitless late remorse doth trace—
Like Hebrew lore, a backward pace—
Her irrecoverable race.

Disjointed numbers—sense unknit;
Huge reams of folly—shreds of wit;
Compose the mingled mass of it.

My scalded eyes no longer brook,
Upon this ink-blurr’d thing to look—
Go—shut the leaves—and clasp the book!

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Ode the Confederate Dead
by Allen Tate (1899-1979)

Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.

Autumn is desolation in the plot
Of a thousand acres where these memories grow
From the inexhaustible bodies that are not
Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.
Think of the autumns that have come and gone!–
Ambitious November with the humors of the year,
With a particular zeal for every slab,
Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot
On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:
The brute curiosity of an angel’s stare
Turns you, like them, to stone,
Transforms the heaving air
Till plunged to a heavier world below
You shift your sea-space blindly
Heaving, turning like the blind crab.

      Dazed by the wind, only the wind
      The leaves flying, plunge

You know who have waited by the wall
The twilight certainty of an animal,
Those midnight restitutions of the blood
You know–the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze
Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,
The cold pool left by the mounting flood,
Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.
You who have waited for the angry resolution
Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow,
You know the unimportant shrift of death
And praise the vision
And praise the arrogant circumstance
Of those who fall
Rank upon rank, hurried beyond decision–
Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall.

      Seeing, seeing only the leaves
      Flying, plunge and expire

Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth they will not last.
Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,
Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.
Lost in that orient of the thick and fast
You will curse the setting sun.

      Cursing only the leaves crying
      Like an old man in a storm

You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.

                                    The hound bitch
Toothless and dying, in a musty cellar
Hears the wind only.

            Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,
Seals the malignant purity of the flood,
What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?
The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;
In a tangle of willows without light
The singular screech-owl’s tight
Invisible lyric seeds the mind
With the furious murmur of their chivalry.

      We shall say only the leaves
      Flying, plunge and expire

We shall say only the leaves whispering
In the improbable mist of nightfall
That flies on multiple wing:
Night is the beginning and the end
And in between the ends of distraction
Waits mute speculation, the patient curse
That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps
For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.
What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act
To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave
In the house? The ravenous grave?

                                    Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall:
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush–
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!

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Azrael
by Robert Gilbert Welsh (1869-1924)

The angels in high places
         Who minister to us,
Reflect God’s smile,—their faces
         Are luminous;
Save one, whose face is hidden,
         (The Prophet saith),
The unwelcome, the unbidden,
         Azrael, Angel of Death.
And yet that veilèd face, I know
         Is lit with pitying eyes,
Like those faint stars, the first to glow
         Through cloudy winter skies.

That they may never tire,
         Angels, by God’s decree,
Bear wings of snow and fire,—
         Passion and purity;
Save one, all unavailing,
         (The Prophet saith),
His wings are gray and trailing,
         Azrael, Angel of Death.
And yet the souls that Azrael brings
         Across the dark and cold,
Look up beneath those folded wings,
         And find them lined with gold.

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The Minuet
by Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905)

Grandma told me all about it,
Told me so I couldn’t doubt it,
How she danced, my Grandma danced; Long ago—
How she held her pretty head,
How her dainty skirt she spread,
How she slowly leaned and rose—long ago.

Grandma’s hair was bright and sunny,
Dimpled cheeks, too, ah, how funny!
Really quite a pretty girl—l ng ago.
Bless her! why, she wears a cap,
Grandma does, and takes a nap
Every single day; and yet
Grandma danced the minuet—long ago.

“Modern ways are quite alarming,”
Grandma says, “but boys were charming”
(Girls and boys, she means, of course) “long ago.”
Brave but modest, grandly shy,
She would like to have us try
Just to feel like those who met
In the graceful minuet—long ago.

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