death

When Friendship or Love
Our sympathies move;
When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
The lips may beguile,
With a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection's a Tear:

Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soultelling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear:

Mild Charity's glow,
To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
Compassion will melt,

What festival is ancient Rome preparing?
Where flow the crowds in noisy waves?
Why these aromas, myrrh's sweet smoke
And censers all around abrim with fragrant herbs?
From Capitoline Hill to Tiber's waves,
Above universal city's streets,
Why are the priceless rugs and purple stuffs
Spread among garlands, laurels?
Why all this noise? The crash and thump of timpani?
Are these heralds of joy or triumph?
Why wearing the miter hastes the holy father
With gonfalon to the prayer house?

When I was young and Scottish I
Allergic was to spending;
I put a heap of bawbees by,
But now my life is ending,
Although I would my hoarded pelf
Impetuously scatter,
Each day I live I find myself
Financially fatter.

Though all the market I might buy,
There's nothing to my needing;
I only have one bed to lie,
One mouth for feeding.
So what's the good of all that dough
Accumulating daily?
I should have spent it long ago
In living gaily.

457

Sweet—safe—Houses—Glad—gay—Houses—
Sealed so stately tight—
Lids of Steel—on Lids of Marble—
Locking Bare feet out—

Brooks of Plush—in Banks of Satin
Not so softly fall
As the laughter—and the whisper—
From their People Pearl—

No Bald Death—affront their Parlors—
No Bold Sickness come
To deface their Stately Treasures—
Anguish—and the Tomb—

Hum by—in Muffled Coaches—
Lest they—wonder Why—
Any—for the Press of Smiling—
Interrupt—to die—

705

Suspense—is Hostiler than Death—
Death—tho'soever Broad,
Is Just Death, and cannot increase—
Suspense—does not conclude—

But perishes—to live anew—
But just anew to die—
Annihilation—plated fresh
With Immortality—

O I forbid you, maidens a',
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.

There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh
But they leave him a wad,
Either their rings, or green mantles,
Or else their maidenhead.

Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has broded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she's awa to Carterhaugh
As fast as she can hie.

When she came to carterhaugh
Tam Lin was at the well,

Patrizia doesn't want to
Talk about love she
Says she just
Wants to make
Love but she talks
About it almost endlessly to me.

It is horrible it
Is the worst thing in life
Says Patrizia
Nothing
Not death not sickness
Is as bad as love

I am always
In love I am always
Suffering from love
Says Patrizia. Now
I am used to it
But I am suffering all the same

Do you know what I did to her
Once?--speaking
Of her girlfriend--I kicked her out

(After Lorca)

Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women.
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws.

I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.
In the cave at the tip of the lily,

’Tis said that the Passion Flower,
With its figures of spear and sword
And hammer and nails, is a symbol
Of the Woe of our Blessed Lord.
So still in the Heart of Beauty
Has been hidden, since Life drew breath,
The sword and the spear of Anguish,
And the hammer and nails of Death.

LAMP of my life, the lips of Death
Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath;
Naught shall revive thy vanished spark . . .
Love, must I dwell in the living dark?


Tree of my life, Death's cruel foot
Hath crushed thee down to thy hidden root;
Nought shall restore thy glory fled . . .
Shall the blossom live when the tree is dead?


Life of my life, Death's bitter sword
Hath severed us like a broken word,
Rent us in twain who are but one . .