Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ELEGY: THE GHOST WHOSE LIPS WERE WARM; FOR GEOFFREY GORER, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The ice, weeping, breaks Last Line: "she had to warm her eternal night." Subject(s): Ghosts; Supernatural | ||||||||
"T. M., Esq., an old acquaintance of mine, hath assured me, that . . . after his first wife's death, as he lay in bed awake . . . his wife opened the Closet Door, and came into the Chamber by the Bed side, and looked upon him and stooped down and kissed him; her Lips were warm, he fancied they would have been cold. He was about to have Embraced her, but was afraid it might have done him hurt. When she went from him, he asked her when he should see her again? She turned about and smiled, but said nothing." -- Miscellanies collected by John Aubrey, Esq., F.R.S., 1696. "THE ice, weeping, breaks. But my heart is underground. And the ice of its dead tears melts never. Wakes No sigh, no sound, From where the dead lie close, as those above -- The young -- lie in their first deep night of love, When the spring nights are fiery with wild dew, and rest Leaves on young leaves, and youthful breast on breast. The dead lie soft in the first fire of spring And through the eternal cold, they hear birds sing, And smile as if the one long-treasured kiss Had worn away their once-loved lips to this Remembered smile -- for there is always one Kiss that we take to be our grave's long sun. Once Time was but the beat of heart to heart; And one kiss burnt the imperfect woof apart Of this dead world, and summer broke from this: We built new worlds with one immortal kiss. Sun of my life, she went to warm the dead, And I must now go sunless in their stead. They clothed a dead man in my dress. By day He walks the earth, by night he rots away; So walks a dead man, waning, in my dress, By black disastrous suns of death grown less, Grown dim and shrunken, wax before a fire, A shrunken apeish thing, blackened and dire. This black disastrous sun yet hath no heat. How shall I bear my heart without its beat, My clay without its soul, my eternal bone That cries to its deserting flesh, alone, More cold than she is in her grave's long night, That hath my heart for covering, warmth, and light. * * * * * But when she had been twelve months in her grave She came where I lay in my bed: she gave Her kiss. And oh, her lips were warm to me. And so I feared it, dared not touch and see If still her heart were warm . . . dust-dun, death-cold Lips should be from death's night. I dared not hold That heart that came warm from the grave . . . afraid, I tore down all the earth of death, and laid Its endless cold upon her heart. For this Dead man in my dress dared not kiss Her who laid by death's cold, lest I Should feel it when she came to lie Beside my heart. My dead love gave Lips warm with love though in her grave. I stole her kiss, the only light She had to warm her eternal night." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN THE EVENINGS by LUCILLE CLIFTON THE MOTHS: 1. CIRCA 1582 by NORMAN DUBIE GHOSTS IN ENGLAND by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE GHOST OF DEACON BROWN by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON EN PASSANT by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL |
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