Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DEATH'S DIGNITY, by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DEATH'S DIGNITY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Here lies a common man. His horny hands
Last Line: The strange and sudden dignity of death.
Variant Title(s): Mortis Dignitas
Subject(s): Death; Faces; Life; Tears; Dead, The


HERE lies a common man. His horny hands,
Crossed meekly as a maid's upon his breast,
Show marks of toil, and by his general dress
You judge him to have been an artizan.
Doubtless, could all his life be written out,
The story would not thrill nor start a tear;
He worked, laughed, loved, and suffered in his time,
And now rests peacefully, with upturned face
Whose look belies all struggle in the past.
A homely tale: yet, trust me, I have seen
The greatest of the earth go stately by,
While shouting multitudes beset the way,
With less of awe. The gap between a king
And me, a nameless gazer in the crowd,
Seemed not so wide as that which stretches now
Betwixt us two, this dead one and myself.
Untitled, dumb, and deedless, yet he is
Transfigured by a touch from out the skies
Until he wears, with all-unconscious grace,
The strange and sudden Dignity of Death.





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