Epitaphs

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1. Rose Leaves When they shall close my careless eyes And look their last upon my face, I fear that some will say: “her lies A man of deep disgrace; His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle, He dreamed so much, he did so little. When they shall seal y coffin lid And this worn mask I […]...
2. EIGHT EPITAPHS I. You liked your scrolls? — Here they are. The manuscript of your book? — Here it is. Your wine and figs? — Here they are. The portrait of your wife? — Here it is. Your garden and your house? — Here they are. The box you never opened? — Here it is. You are […]...
3. Epitaphs For Two Players I. EDWIN BOOTH An old actor at the Player’s Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players. The youth played in the blear hotel. The rafters gleamed with glories strange. And winds of […]...
4. TO ROBIN RED-BREAST Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be With leaves and moss-work for to cover me; And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter, Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister! For epitaph, in foliage, next write this: HERE, HERE THE TOMB OF ROBIN HERRICK IS!...
5. Modern Love XXX: What Are We First What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text. Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun: Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is […]...
6. Dedication MY first gift and my last, to you I dedicate this fascicle of songs – The only wealth I have: Just as they are, to you. I speak the truth in soberness, and say I had rather bring a light to your clear eyes, Had rather hear you praise This bosomful of songs Than that […]...
7. Bedtime Story The moon lies on the river Like a drop of oil. The children come to the banks to be healed Of their wounds and bruises. The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises Come to be healed of their rage. The mothers grow lovely; their faces soften, The birds in their throats awake. They […]...
8. The Heritage Our Fathers in a wondrous age, Ere yet the Earth was small, Ensured to us a heritage, And doubted not at all That we the children of their heart, Which then did beat so high, In later rime should play like part For our posterity. A thousand years they steadfast built, To ‘vantage us and […]...
9. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
10. A Curse For A Nation I heard an angel speak last night, And he said ‘Write! Write a Nation’s curse for me, And send it over the Western Sea.’ I faltered, taking up the word: ‘Not so, my lord! If curses must be, choose another To send thy curse against my brother. ‘For I am bound by gratitude, By love […]...
11. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
12. To H Thank you so much, I can’t thank you all enough For this most beautiful epitaph: “Here lies the body Of a young man Who never lived his life.” It’s so much better Than the Baa Baa blacksheep sign You always had round my collar. (05 March, 2006)...
13. Sublime Was the Warning Sublime was the warning that liberty spoke, And grand was the moment when Spaniards awoke Into life and revenge from the conqueror’s chain. Oh, Liberty! let not this spirit have rest, Till it move, like a breeze, o’er the waves of the west Give the light of your look to each sorrowing spot, Nor, oh, […]...
14. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
15. Cassius Hueffer They have chiseled on my stone the words: ‘His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him That nature might stand up and say to all the world, This was a man.’ Those who knew me smile As they read this empty rhetoric. My epitaph should have been: ‘Life was not gentle to […]...
16. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
17. The False Friends They laid their hands upon my head, They stroked my cheek and brow; And time could heal a hurt, they said, And time could dim a vow. And they were pitiful and mild Who whispered to me then, “The heart that breaks in April, child, Will mend in May again.” Oh, many a mended heart […]...
18. To A Shade If you have revisited the town, thin Shade, Whether to look upon your monument (I wonder if the builder has been paid) Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent To drink of that salt breath out of the sea When grey gulls flit about instead of men, And the gaunt houses put on majesty: Let […]...
19. Sonnet XVII Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
20. Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come Who will believe my verse in time to come If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts: If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
21. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
22. Lobster For Lunch His face was like a lobster red, His legs were white as mayonnaise: “I’ve had a jolly lunch,” he said, That Englishman of pleasant ways. “Thy do us well at our hotel: In England food is dull these days.” “We had a big langouste for lunch. I almost ate the whole of it. And now […]...
23. The Fathers Our fathers all were poor, Poorer our fathers’ fathers; Beyond, we dare not look. We, the sons, keep store Of tarnished gold that gathers Around us from the night, Record it in this book That, when the line is drawn, Credit and creditor gone, Column and figure flown, Will open into light. Archaic fevers shake […]...
24. Mother, Among The Dustbins Mother, among the dustbins and the manure I feel the measure of my humanity, an allure As of the presence of God, I am sure In the dustbins, in the manure, in the cat at play, Is the presence of God, in a sure way He moves there. Mother, what do you say? I too […]...
25. Frolic THE CHILDREN were shouting together And racing along the sands, A glimmer of dancing shadows, A dovelike flutter of hands. The stars were shouting in heaven, The sun was chasing the moon: The game was the same as the children’s, They danced to the self-same tune. The whole of the world was merry, One joy […]...
26. The Instructor At times when under cover I ‘ave said, To keep my spirits up an’ raise a laugh, ‘Earin ‘im pass so busy over-‘ead Old Nickel-Neck, ‘oo is n’t on the Staff “There’s one above is greater than us all” Before ‘im I ‘ave seen my Colonel fall, An ‘watched ‘im write my Captain’s epitaph, So […]...
27. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
28. The Unseen Playmate When children are playing alone on the green, In comes the playmate that never was seen. When children are happy and lonely and good, The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood. Nobody heard him, and nobody saw, His is a picture you never could draw, But he’s sure to be present, abroad […]...
29. Child The young child, Christ, is straight and wise And asks questions of the old men, questions Found under running water for all children And found under shadows thrown on still waters By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled. Found to the eyes of children alone, untold, Singing a low song in the loneliness. And […]...
30. Sonnet XXII: With Fools and Children To Folly With fools and children, good discretion bears; Then, honest people, bear with Love and me, Nor older yet, nor wiser made by years, Amongst the rest of fools and children be; Love, still a baby, plays with gauds and toys, And, like a wanton, sports with every feather, And idiots still are running […]...
31. The Black Tower Say that the men of the old black tower, Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds, Their money spent, their wine gone sour, Lack nothing that a soldier needs, That all are oath-bound men: Those banners come not in. There in the tomb stand the dead upright, But winds come up from the shore: […]...
32. Hymn 113 Abraham’s blessing on the Gentiles. Gen. 17:7; Rom. 15:8; Mk 10:14. How large the promise, how divine, To Abram and his seed! “I’ll be a God to thee and thine, Supplying all their need.” The words of his extensive love From age to age endure; The Angel of the cov’nant proves, And seals the blessing […]...
33. Two Graves First Ghost To sepulcher my mouldy bones I bough a pile of noble stones, And half a year a sculptor spent To hew my marble monument, The stateliest to rear its head In all this city of the dead. And generations passing through Will gape, and ask: What did he do To earn this tomb […]...
34. 169. Address to Wm. Tytler, Esq., of Woodhouselee REVERED defender of beauteous Stuart, Of Stuart, a name once respected; A name, which to love was the mark of a true heart, But now ’tis despis’d and neglected. Tho’ something like moisture conglobes in my eye, Let no one misdeem me disloyal; A poor friendless wand’rer may well claim a sigh, Still more if […]...
35. Psalm 111 part 2 The perfections of God. Great is the Lord; his works of might Demand our noblest songs: Let his assembled saints unite Their harmony of tongues. Great is the mercy of the Lord; He gives his children food; And, ever mindful of his word, He makes his promise good. His Son, the great Redeemer, came To […]...
36. The Admirations and Contempts of time The Admirations and Contempts of time Show justest through an Open Tomb The Dying as it were a Height Reorganizes Estimate And what We saw not We distinguish clear And mostly see not What We saw before ‘Tis Compound Vision Light enabling Light The Finite furnished With the Infinite Convex and Concave Witness Back toward […]...
37. Dirge Boys and girls that held her dear, Do your weeping now; All you loved of her lies here. Brought to earth the arrogant brow, And the withering tongue Chastened; do your weeping now. Sing whatever songs are sung, Wind whatever wreath, For a playmate perished young, For a spirit spent in death. Boys and girls […]...
38. By the Spring, at Sunset Sometimes we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of laughter and farewell. Beside the road Afar from those who said “Good-by” I write, Far from my city task, my lawful load. Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, […]...
39. 1887 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because ’tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not […]...
40. Beauty WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph “Here lies all that no one loved of him And that loved no one.” Then in a trice that whim Has […]...