Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO THE DEAD, by EDITH MATILDA THOMAS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO THE DEAD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We say you sleep, but light your sleep, meseems
Last Line: Shall all the dead speak to me -- and not thou!
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


To All

WE SAY you sleep, but light your sleep, meseems;
We call ye silent, when your undertone
Threads all the world's exultance, wrath and moan,
Ye lifeful-dead, with whom this sad earth teems!
Are these your voices mixed with troubled streams?
Is this your speech, in ancient tongues unknown,
Through twilight fields and darkling wood-ways blown?
Have ye the winds of heaven to serve your schemes?

O aye-increasing, far outnumbering host,
Crowd not so close our handful-breathing clan:
This moment ye are distant but a span,
Such as Ulysses kept on that stern coast
Where round the warm libation, lips all wan,
With clamor shrill, came many a thirsting ghost!

To One

Thou movest in their front, serene, serene!
How smilest thou, as one not knowing yet
That he is Death's, -- the rose and violet
(Not asphodel) about thy temples seen.
Now with drawn spirit-sword I stand between
Thee and the murmuring shades that so beset;
Be thy lips only with the offering wet;
Then speak! -- where goest thou? where hast thou been?

In vain, in vain! for, wavering through the gloom,
Thou art become stream, forest, hill ... and now
It is the evening star that masks thy brow.
Gone art thou, gone the rose and violet bloom,
And the unnumbered shades their sway resume:
Shall all the dead speak to me -- and not thou!





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