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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DUKE OF BYRON IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH by GEORGE CHAPMAN (1559-1634)

Poet Analysis

First Line: BY HORROW OF DEATH, LET ME ALONE IN DEATH
Last Line: THESE ARE BUT ROPES OF SAND.
Subject(s): DEATH; DEAD, THE;
BY HORROR of death, let me alone in peace,
And leave my soul to me, whom it concerns;
You have no charge of it; I feel her free:
How she doth rouse, and like a falcon stretch
Her silver wings; a threatening death with death;
At whom I joyfully will east her off.
I know this body but a sink of folly,
The groundwork and raised frame of woe and frailty;
The bond and bundle of corruption;
A quick corpse, only sensible of grief,
A walking sepulchre, or household thief:
A glass of air, broken with less than breath,
A slave bound face to face to death, till death.
And what said all you more? I know, besides,
That life is but a dark and stormy night
Of senseless dreams, terrors, and broken sleeps;
A tyranny, devising pains to plague
And make man long in dying, racks his death;
And death is nothing: what can you say more?
I bring a long globe and a little earth,
Am seated like earth, betwixt both the heavens,
That if I rise, to heaven I rise; if fall,
I likewise fall to heaven; what stronger faith
Hath any of your souls? what say you more?
Why lose I time in these things? Talk of knowledge,
It serves for inward use. I will not die
Like to clergyman; but like the captain
That prayed on horseback, and with sword in hand,
Threatened the sun, commanding it to stand;
These are but ropes of sand.




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