Quotes
Quotes about Death
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them.
.....
Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,--
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh death in life, the days that are no more!
I follow up the quest
Despite of Day and Night and Death and Hell.
Sweet is true love tho' given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain.
Let love be free; free love is for the best
And after heaven, on our dull side of death,
What should be best, if not so pure a love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness?
Death's truer name
Is "Onward," no discordance in the roll
And march of that Eternal Harmony
Whereto the world beats time.
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
For I say this is death and the sole death,--
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.
Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face.
.......
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,
The heroes of old;
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness, and cold.
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
This was the truest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word;
And never earth's philosopher
Traced with his golden pen
On the deathless page truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand sweet song.
Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet
Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet;
And Death is beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied,
A nature sloping to the southern side;
I thank her for it, though when clouds arise
Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate death.
Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love--But praise! O praise and praise
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.
The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed,
Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed:
'T was red with the blood of freemen and white with the fear of the foe;
And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know.
Up the River of Death
Sailed the Great Admiral!
No record of her high descent
There needs, nor memory of her name;
Enough that Raphael's colors blent
To give her features deathless fame.
Death's but one more to-morrow.
Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty--they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars--they are at peace. In the midst of battles, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death.
