Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OF THE REMEMBERED DEAD, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL Poet's Biography First Line: There is no moment when our dead lose power Last Line: Draws into fellowship of loveliness? Subject(s): Death; Ghosts; Supernatural; Dead, The | ||||||||
THERE is no moment when our dead lose power; Unsignalled, unannounced they visit us. Who calleth them I know not. Sorrowful, They haunt reproachfully some venal hour In days of joy, or when the world is near, And for a moment scourge with memories The money-changers of the temple-soul. In the dim space between two gulfs of sleep, Or in the stillness of the lonely shore, They rise for balm or torment, sweet or sad, And most are mine where, in the kindly woods, Beside the childlike joy of summer streams, The stately sweetness of the pine hath power To call their kindred comforting anew. Use well thy dead. They come to ask of thee What thou hast done with all this buried love, The seed of purer life? Or has it fallen unused In stony ways and brought thy life no gain? Wilt thou with gladness in another world Say it has grown to forms of duty done And ruled thee with a conscience not thine own? Another world! How shall we find our dead? What forceful law shall bring us face to face? Another world! What yearnings there shall guide? Will love souls twinned of love bring near again? And that one common bond of duty held This living and that dead, when life was theirs? Or shall some stronger soul, in life revered, Bring both to touch, with nature's certainty, As the pure crystal atoms of its kind Draws into fellowship of loveliness? | 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 DECANTER OF MADEIRA, AGED 86, TO GEORGE BANCROFT, AGED 86 by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL HOW THE CUMBERLAND WENT DOWN [MARCH 8, 1862] by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL |
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