Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM, by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thwart his brow and round his eyes
Last Line: And so all inviolate?
Subject(s): Man-woman Relationships; Male-female Relations


'Thwart his brow and round his eyes
Mark the weary lines and deep!
Nay, they baffle our surmise,
And are secrets Death must keep?

When a man is dead you deem
That the child's look comes apace:—
Ancient hope, poetic dream,
Light of first love haunt the face!

Or at most his look but is
Sum of all the unsensuous side
Of that life which once was his
Ere he sickened, ere he died.

Nay, at last you are not loth
To admit that more is there—
Baffled hope, and cheated troth,
Disappointment and despair!

Yet with me you have not seen
How this dead man's message mute,
Proves but th' old blood-bond between
Man and some ancestral brute!

You are shocked because I read
Old debauch and bygone hate
In this mask as in a screed
Signed by the trite mark of Fate.

Nay, you shudder when I ask,—
Is it that the muscles change
Their old tension through the mask,
Leaving it new-drawn and strange,

Or is't some dark dominant sin
Makes the whole face loom so great,
So ascetical, so thin,
And so all inviolate?





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net