Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ARIEL AND THE SUICIDE, by THOMAS HOOD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ARIEL AND THE SUICIDE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Let me remember how I saved a man
Last Line: So pity me and all my fated peers.
Subject(s): Suicide


LET me remember how I saved a man,
Whose fatal noose was fasten'd on a bough,
Intended to abridge his sad life's span;
For haply I was by when he began
His stern soliloquy in life's dispraise,
And overheard his melancholy plan,
How he had made a vow to end his days,
And therefore follow'd him in all his ways.

Through brake and tangled copse, for much he loath'd
All populous haunts, and roam'd in forests rude,
To hide himself from man. But I had clothed
My delicate limbs with plumes, and still pursued,
Where only foxes and wild cats intrude,
Till we were come beside an ancient tree
Late blasted by a storm. Here he renew'd
His loud complaints, -- choosing that spot to be
The scene of his last horrid tragedy.

It was a wild and melancholy glen,
Made gloomy by tall firs and cypress dark,
Whose roots, like any bones of buried men,
Push'd through the rotten sod for fear's remark;
A hundred horrid stems, jagged and stark,
Wrestled with crooked arms in hideous fray,
Besides sleek ashes with their dappled bark,
Like crafty serpents climbing for a prey,
With many blasted oaks moss-grown and gray.

But here upon his final desperate clause
Suddenly I pronounced so sweet a strain,
Like a pang'd nightingale, it made him pause,
Till half the frenzy of his grief was slain,
The sad remainder oozing from his brain
In timely ecstasies of healing tears,
Which through his ardent eyes began to drain; --
Meanwhile the deadly fates unclosed their shears; --
So pity me and all my fated peers.





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