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Like a light out of our heart,

You are gone.

Grief

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the mid-night air

Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access

Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

Grief for the Dead in silence like to death—

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe,

Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet.

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

Companion

JO McDOUGALL

When Grief came to visit,

she hung her skirts and jackets in my closet.

She claimed the only bath.

When I protested,

she assured me it would be

only for a little while.

Then she fell in love with the house,

repapered the rooms,

laid green carpet in the den.

She’s a good listener

and plays a mean game of Bridge.

But it’s been seven years.

Once, I ordered her outright to leave.

Days later

she came back, weeping.

I’d enjoyed my mornings,

coffee for one;

my solitary sunsets,

my Tolstoy and Molière.

I asked her in.

Remember

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

From To W. P.

GEORGE SANTAYANA

With you a part of me hath passed away;

For in the peopled forest of my mind

A tree made leafless by this wintry wind

Shall never don again its green array.

Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,

Have something of their friendliness resigned;

Another, if I would, I could not find,

And I am grown much older in a day.

But yet I treasure in my memory

Your gift of charity, and young heart’s ease,

And the dear honor of your amity;

For these once mine, my life is rich with these.

And I scarce know which part may greater be—

What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

. . .

To Death

OLIVER ST. JOHN GOGARTY

But for your Terror

Where would be Valour?

What is Love for

But to stand in your way?

Taker and Giver,

For all your endeavour

You leave us with more

Than you touch with decay!

That it is a road

ARIWARA NO NARIHARA

That it is a road

Which some day we all travel

I had heard before,

Yet I never expected

To take it so soon myself.

From In Memoriam A. H. H.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

XXVII

I envy not in any moods

The captive void of noble rage,

The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes

His license in the field of time,

Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

The heart that never plighted troth

But stagnates in the weeds of sloth,

Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

’Tis better to have loved