One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower, That Time upon her angel brow should set His crooked autograph, and mar the jet Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green, The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy. Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes.
He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.
All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers; hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.
The evil-doer mourns in the next; he mourns in both. He mourns and suffers when he sees the evil of his own work.
Call it not vain: they do not err Who say that when the poet dies Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies.
Where do we record the passing of wildlife? Who mourns the silent deaths of the small?
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores: Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.
Whoever mourns the dead mourns himself.
