While his mother is weeping tears of blood,
Her breasts are still filling with milk.
MEI YAO CH’EN
CHINESE (1002-1060)
TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH
O grief! even on the bud that fairly flowered
O grief! even on the bud that fairly flowered
The sun hath lowered;
And at the breast which Love durst never venture
Bold Death did enter.
Pity, O heavens, that have my Love in keeping,
My cries and weeping.
ANONYMOUS
ENGLISH (16TH CENTURY)
On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy,
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scaped world’s, and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
BEN JONSON
ENGLISH (1572-1637)
Slow, slow, fresh fount
Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet, slower, yet; O faintly, gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
Droop herbs, and flowers,
Fall grief in showers,
Our beauties are not ours:
O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is now a withered daffodil.
BEN JONSON
ENGLISH (1572-1637)
They are all gone into the world of light
They are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit ling’ring here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is dressed,
After the sun’s remove.
I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days:
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmering and decays.
O holy hope! and high humility,
High as the Heavens above!
These are your walks, and you have showed them me
To kindle my cold love.
Dear, beauteous death! the jewel of the just,
Shining nowhere, but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust;
Could man outlook that mark!
He that hath found some fledged bird’s nest, may know
At first sight, if the bird be flown;
But what fair well or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.
And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul, when man doth sleep:
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
If a star were confined into a tomb
Her captive flames must needs burn there;
But when the hand that locked her up gives room,
She’ll shine through all the sphere.
O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under thee!
Resume thy spirit from this world of thrall
Into true liberty.
Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill
My perspective still as they pass,
Or else remove me hence unto that hill,
Where I shall need no glass.
HENRY VAUGHAN
ENGLISH (1622-1695)
What piercing cold I feel
What piercing cold I feel:
my dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel. . . .
YOSA BUSON
JAPANESE (1716-1783)
TRANSLATED BY HAROLD HENDERSON
On His Deceased Wife
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescu’d from death by force though pale and faint,
Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was vail’d, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin’d
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she enclin’d
I wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night.
JOHN MILTON
ENGLISH (1608-1674)
Coronach
He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font reappearing
From the raindrops shall borrow;
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are serest,
But our flower was in flushing
When blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi,
Sage counsel in cumber,
Red hand in the foray,
How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone—and for ever!
SIR WALTER SCOTT
SCOTTISH (1771-1832)
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind —
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
ENGLISH (1770-1850)
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep
From Adonais
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep —
He hath awakened from the dream of life —
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings.—We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
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 grey in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
ENGLISH (1792-1822)
The Cross of Snow
In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face—the face of one long dead —
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
AMERICAN (1807-1882)
Sleep brings no joy . . .
Sleep brings no joy to me,
Remembrance never dies;
My soul is given to misery,
And lives in sighs.
Sleep brings no rest to me;
The shadows of the dead,
My wakening eyes may never see,
Surround my bed.
Sleep brings no hope to me,
In soundest sleep they come,
And with their doleful imagery
Deepen the gloom.
Sleep brings no strength to me,
No power renewed to brave:
I only sail a wilder sea,
A darker wave.
Sleep brings no friend to me
To soothe and aid to bear;
They all gaze on—how scornfully!
And I despair.
Sleep brings no wish to fret
My harassed heart beneath:
My only wish is to forget
In endless sleep of death.
EMILY BRONTë
ENGLISH (1818-1848)
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love which was more than love
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the wingéd seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me —
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
AMERICAN (1809-1849)
Break, break, break
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
ENGLISH (1809-1892)
Dark house, by which once more I stand
From In Memoriam
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp’d no more —
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
ENGLISH (1809-1892)
Grief
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls as countries lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to Death —
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
ENGLISH (1806-1861)
May and Death
I wish that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three parts of spring’s delightful things;
Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.
A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!
There must be many a pair of friends
Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm
Moon-births and the long evening-ends.
So, for their sake, be May still May!
Let their new time, as mine of old,
Do all it did for me: I bid
Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.
Only, one little sight, one plant,
Woods have in May, that starts up green
Save a sole streak which, so to speak,
Is spring’s blood, spilt its leaves between, —
That, they might spare; a certain wood
Might miss the plant; their loss were small:
But I,—whene’er the leaf grows there,
>
Its drop comes from my heart, that’s all.
ROBERT BROWNING
ENGLISH (1812-1889)
Requiescat
Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.
Her mirth the world required:
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.
Her cabin’d, ample Spirit,
It flutter’d, and fail’d for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty Hall of Death.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
ENGLISH (1822-1888)
Requiescat
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life’s buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
OSCAR WILDE
IRISH (1854-1900)
The Haunter
He does not think that I haunt here nightly:
How shall I let him know
That whither his fancy sets him wandering
I, too, alertly go? —
Hover and hover a few feet from him
Just as I used to do,
But cannot answer the words he lifts me —
Only listen thereto!
When I could answer he did not say them:
When I could let him know
How I would like to join in his journeys
Seldom he wished to go.
Now that he goes and wants me with him
More than he used to do,
Never he sees my faithful phantom
Though he speaks thereto.
Yes, I companion him to places
Only dreamers know,
Where the shy hares print long paces,
Where the night rooks go;
Into old aisles where the past is all to him,
Close as his shade can do,
Always lacking the power to call to him,
Bartlett's Poems for Occasions Page 20