'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...GOD'S DETERMINATIONS: THE JOY OF CHURCH FELLOWSHIP RIGHTLY ATTENDED by EDWARD TAYLOR BLIND by LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE AUTUMN WOODS by ANNA M. ACKERMANN LINES WRITTEN BY A DEATH-BED by MATTHEW ARNOLD SONG: 1 by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD BLAKE'S APOLOGY FOR HIS CATALOGUE by WILLIAM BLAKE |