Facing own death
My bound hands embrace you, and my head as it falls rests its dying eyes upon you.
Camille Desmoulins (France 1760-1794) (letter to his wife
Lucille, April 1, 1794. She followed him under the
guillotine two weeks later.)
Lastly, do I vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.
Catherine of Aragon (xx 1485-1536)
(letter to Henry VIII, 1535)
...farewell lovinge wife, ffarewell the dearest to me on all the Earthe, ffarewell, by the hand from the hearte of the most faithfull lovinge husbande...
Chideock Ticheburne (xx 1558-1586) (letter to wife Agness,
1586. He was executed the next day.)
Written with the dying hand of sometimes thy Husband, but now alasse overthrowne.
Walter Ralegh (letter to wife Elizabeth, 1603.
He was released from prison thirteen years later.)
Time will not stay for thee, my love,
The clouds are coming and the snow;
The thunder rocks the realm above--
One farewell kiss before we go.
John Leicester Warren, lord de Tabley (England 1835-95)
"A Song of Dust" [ELP]
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Rossetti (England 1830-94) "Remember" [ELP]
Facing death of beloved
fear of bereavement
"Do not look at us angrily, Lord God!
He is no thorn that hurts my eye:
he was born here to give me joy--
my joy a play of light gone out,
if he should die!"
Otto von Botenlauben (xx ) (1197) (tr. Dronke)
We looked, we loved, and therewith instantly
Death became terrible to you and me.
By love we disenthralled our natural terror
From every comfortable philosopher
Or tall, grey doctor of divinity:
Death stood at last in his true rank and order.
Robert Graves "Pure Death" (but see above)
Worrying, prayer
The day you do not write and silence follows,
to be broken only by life's end,
I shall know that you have not forgotten,
that now you love me perfectly,
for I shall understand that you are dead.
sister Mary Madeleva (USA 1887-1964)
"The Day No Letter Comes" (geyughhhh!)
My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
'O mercy!' to myself I cried,
'If Lucy should be dead!'
William Wordsworth (207) (England 1770-1850)
And he said why is she late
He said why is she late
Wilfred Watson (xx b.1911) "The Juniper Tree" [Cole]
Suffering beloved's final illness
haunting knowledge of the body's decay
burden of nursing
Beloved murdered
by jealous spouse/ family/ suitor
(Raymond of Roussillon, in a 12th C Provenc,al romance quoted by
Stendhal, kills his wife's lover and feeds her, unknowing, his roasted
heart)
Crisis of death-- handling it amazingly coolly
shock, disbelief, sense of unreality
Death, by this only stroke, triumphs above
The greatest power of Love.
Thomas Sprat (England 1635-1713)
"On His Mistress Drowned" (1693) [Ault2]
Do not ask what it looked like, his burnt-out heart!
Nizami "Layla"
I went down to the St. James Infirmary
I saw my baby there
She was stretched out on a long, white table,
So cold, so pale, so fair.
J. Primrose
Closing of heart
numbness as a coping mechanism
suppressing feelings, intellectualizing, rationalizing
Strange cancellings must ink the eternal books
When love-crossed-out will bring the answer right!
Edna St. Vincent Millay "Interim"
Relief
In France men who have lost their wives are sad, while widows on the contrary are gay and happy. Women have a proverb about the felicity of widowhood. There is therefore no equality in the contract of marriage.
Stendhal (225 Fr. 41)
Faith, thinking positive
waves and pangs of intense grief-- heartache, knife in gut
triggered by reminders-- mutal friends, objects, places
Some nights his first year all alone he looked
Up from eating just as though she might
Be coming home from somewhere in the night,
And he would be ashamed of his not waiting.
...His mind confuses things, and he will sit
Quiet, and be very sure of it,
Sure that when he goes his way to bed,
Shielding the lamp-globe level with his head,
And turns the quilts back, he will find her keeping
A warm place there for him and love and sleeping.
Robert P. Tristram Coffin (xx 1892-1956)
"Old Farmer Alone" [MLP]
Avoidance, distractions-- TV, work
gradually decreasing-- less frequent, less intense
still at special times
in dreams
Bereavement in any phase
(Burying poems
digging them out)
Guilt
wishing you'd been nicer
spoken your love more openly
How many go forth in the morning
Who never come home at night!
And hearts have been broken
For harsh words spoken,
That sorrow can ne'er set right.
Anon. "Unkind Words" [OOTH]
"...when I lost Marie, I told myself that I would remain faithful to her memory."
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 563)
Negative self-image
hopelessness
lost direction
mental disorganization
loss and loneliness
financial hardships
raising kids alone
compulsive self-destructive behavior
overeating, drinking, sex
sense of entitlement
No later light has lighted up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.
Emily Bronte: "Remembrance" [ELP]
Anger
he didn't care enough about me to take care of himself
the doctor didn't do his job right
envy of the unbereaved
Superstitious rituals
keep memory alive
visualizing, inner conversation, speaking to grave
living legacies
taking on his characteristics
endowments
children
In our bedroom our pillows
Still lie side by side.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (Japan 8th C.)
The solace of poetry
Mie love ys dedde,
Gon to hys deathe-bedde,
Al under the wyllowe tree.
Thomas Chatterton (England 1752-70)
"Mynstrelles Songe" [ELP]
Soft is the note, and sad the lay,
That mourns the lovely Rosabelle.
sir Walter Scott "Lay of the Last Minstrel"
We must not weep, my darling, or upbraid
The quiet death who comes to part us twain;
But know that parting would not be such pain
Had not our love a perfect flower been made.
Anon. "Love and Death" [OOTH]
'An Elegy'
So this was all,
Though, free from fears,
She and I had counted on
A thousand years.
O_tomo no Yakamochi (Japan 8th C.)
Oh Anne, oh my darling, I have not forgotten you, my heart at this moment beats for you, my hands tremble and move as if to embrace you.
Murdoch [Word Child 228]
Warm summer sun, shine friendly here;
Warm western wind, blow kindly here;
Green sod above, rest light, rest light--
Good-night Annette! Sweetheart, good-night.
Robert Richardson (1850-1901) "To Annette"
The differences [of approach of a man and a woman] are sufficiently real to provide... that sense of completion which Plato first recognized and which, once experienced, leaves the woman widowed by love's death, not only sorrowful but maimed. One's own half of the world is meaningless when it cannot be shared; and the half the man brought to one, he took with him when he left.
Jessamyn West
Amid my sighing is to be discerned
A sound of plaintiveness
Which calls on Death, lamenting ceaselessly.
To him my every aspiration turned
When in his cruelty
He held my lady fast in his duress
For then the marvel of her loveliness
To Heaven withdrew and to our sight was lost,
Transformed to spiritual beauty there,
Diffusing everywhere
A light of love which greets the angel-host,
Moving their intellect, so deep and wise,
To wonderment, so full of grace it is.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
Self-deathwish
Thus sang Orpheus to his strings
When he was almost slaine
While ye winds soft murmurings
Eccho'd all his woes againe
Euridice Euridice he cry'd
Ah deare Euridice & so he dy'de
Euridice, Ah deare Euridice
the Ecchoing winde reply'dHis head in the water fell,
And with soft voice seemd to sing
Death could not his music quell.
Ev'ry wave strook Ev'ry string
Euridice Euridice it cry'de
Ah deare Euridice & so it dyed
Euridice ah! deare Euridice
The sounding bank reply'd.
17th C. lyric
...Majnun lay down his head on the earth and embraced the gravestone with both arms, pressing his body against it with all the force he could muster. His lips moved once more, then with the words, 'You, my love...' the soul left his body.
Nizami "Layla"
[On the tombstone of Mme. de Bonnemains, General Georges Boulanger carved her given name "Marguerite", and beneath it the simple promise, "See you soon." Two and a half months later, standing before her grave, he shot himself.
Irving Wallace "The Nympho"]
Waterre Wytches, crownede wythe reytes,
Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde.
I die; I comme; mie true love waytes.
Thos the damselle spake and died.
Thomas Chatterton "Mynstrelles Songe" [ELP]
Two lovers lie awaiting in this tomb
Their resurrection from the grave's dark womb.
Faithful in separation, true in love,
One tent will hold them in the world above.
Nizami "Layla"
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.
A.E. Housman "Bredon Hill"
Recovery
socializing rebuilds the heart
pets
growing sense of strength
spiritual attitude
challenge and response
...life and loving soon slip over
Time and the lover.
James Herbert Morse "Who Knows" [TAV]
(Science says most fall in love only once)
But hope springs eternal
love makes the world go round
(next time I'll do even better--
climbing the ladder of desirability
learning from mistakes)
slipping down the scale
Over that love affair, scrappy and clamorous,
Time throws a veil iridescent and glamorous.
Edwin Meade Robinson (xx 1878-1946) "Glamour"
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever.
Walter Savage Landor (86) "Ianthe's Troubles"
"Tomorrow to fresh Woods and Pastures new."
[Wilder Shores]
Under the summer roses,
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful unanswerable questions.
Carl Sandburg (USA 1878-1967)
"Under the Harvest Moon"
That love is all there is
Is all we know of love.
Emily Dickinson (USA 1830-86) [MW]
'Love What It Is'
Love is a circle that doth restless move
In the same sweet eternity of love.
Robert Herrick (192)
O lyric love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire!
Robert Browning [MW]
Deceive, deceive me once again!
Walter Savage Landor (187)
They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall,
They fall like dew, but make no noise at all.
Robert Herrick (53)
"Lovers How They Come and Part" (1648!!!)
We fall, but we keep gettin up
Overandoverandoverandoverandoverandover!
Chryssie Hynde
Just as Luther's Reformation shook society to its foundations at the end of the Middle Ages and thus renewed and rebuilt the world on a rational basis, so a generous person is renewed and restored by love.
Stendhal (101)
Love will find a way
a marriage made in heaven
they did live happily ever after
beavers, geese and swans mate for life
He was a lover of the good old school
Who still becomes more constant as they cool.
Byron [L'A]
But love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning:
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.
sir Walter Ralegh
"As You Came from the Holy Land" (c1600)
But well thou play'dst the housewife's part,
And all thy threads with magic art
Have wound themselves about this heart,
My Mary!
William Cowper "To Mary" [ELP]
He that holds his sweetheart true unto his day of dying
Lives, of all that ever breath'd, most worthy the envying.
Thomas Campion (19)
Be it enough that thou and I are one,
That years and days seem nothing in the shine
Of that perpetual and unsinking sun...
Jonathan Addington Symonds "A Mystery" [OOTH]
The ring, so worn as you behold,
So thin, so pale, is yet of gold.
The passion such it was to prove:
Worn with life's care, love yet was love.
George Crabbe (xx 1754-1832) [ELP]
The Gordian knot
Which true lovers knit,
Undo you cannot,
Nor yet break it
(8) (c1632) Roxburghe Ballads
"Love Will Find Out the Way"
Companioned years have made them comprehend
The comradeship that lies beyond a kiss.
The young ask much of life-- they ask but this,
To fare the road together to its end.
Roselle Mercier Montgomery "For a Wedding Anniversary"
Alas! we are not now too young,
Yet love to us hath safely clung.
Despite of sorrow, years, and care...
William Wetmore Story "Love" [OOTH]
You, now that you have come to be
My one beginning, prime and end,
I count at last as wholly me,
Lover no longer nor yet friend...
Robert Graves "Sullen Moods"
Never change when love has found its home.
Propertius (USA 54 BPE-2)
How vast a memory has Love!
Alexander Pope (England 1688-1744)
"Sappho to Phaon."
Next in glory to enduring love
Wallace Stevens "Sunday Morning"
Someday when we're dreaming
Deep in love, not a lot to say
Then we will remember
Things we said today
Lennon-McCartney
Grow old along with me
Two branches on a tree..
God bless our love
God bless our love.
John Lennon
Beyond the widest of the circling spheres
A sigh which leaves my heart aspires to move,
A new celestial influence which Love
Bestows on it by virtue of his tears
Impels it ever upwards. As it nears
Its goal of longing in the realms above
The pilgrim spirit sees a vision of
A soul in glory whom the host reveres.
Gazing at her, it speaks of what it sees
In subtle words I do not comprehend
Within my heart forlorn which bids it tell.
That noble one is named, I apprehend,
For frequently it mentions Beatrice;
This much, beloved ladies, I know well.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
Love is the Amen of the universe.
Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) (xx 1772-1801)
"Fragments" [JJCW 82]
Love like the light silently wrapping all.
Walt Whitman "Song of the Universal"