Classic and Contemporary Poetry
EPICEDE (JAMES LORIMER GRAHAM, DIED 1876), by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Life may give for love to death Last Line: Light, and song, and sleep at last. Subject(s): Death; Dead, The | ||||||||
LIFE may give for love to death Little; what are life's gifts worth To the dead wrapt round with earth? Yet from lips of living breath Sighs or words we are fain to give, All that yet, while yet we live, Life may give for love to death. Dead so long before his day, Passed out of the Italian sun To the dark where all is done Fallen upon the verge of May; Here at life's and April's end How should song salute my friend Dead so long before his day? Not a kindlier life or sweeter Time, that lights and quenches men, Now may quench or light again, Mingling with the mystic metre Woven of all men's lives with his Not a clearer note than this, Not a kindlier life or sweeter. In this heavenliest part of earth He that living loved the light, Light and song, may rest aright, One in death, if strange in birth, With the deathless dead that make Life the lovelier for their sake In this heavenliest part of earth. Light, and song, and sleep at last -- Struggling hands and suppliant knees Get no goodlier gift than these. Song that holds remembrance fast Light that lightens death, attend Round their graves who have to friend Light, and song, and sleep at last. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND A BALLAD OF DEATH by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE |
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