| Mortua est |
dont_know
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Two candles, tall sentry, beside an earth mound, | 1 |
A dream with wings broken that trail to the ground, | 2 |
Loud flung from the belfry calamitous chime... | 3 |
'Tis thus that you passed o'er the boundaries of time. | 4 |
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Gone by are the hours when the heavens entire | 5 |
Flowed rivers of milk and grew flowers of fire, | 6 |
When the thunderous clouds were but castles erect | 7 |
Which the moon like a queen each in turn did inspect. | 8 |
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I see you a shadow bright silver transcending, | 9 |
With wings high uplifted to heaven ascending, | 10 |
I see you slow climbing through the sky's scaffold bars | 11 |
Midst a tempest of light and a snowstorm of stars; | 12 |
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While the witches the sound of their spinning prolong, | 13 |
Exalted in sunshine, swept up by a song, | 14 |
O'er your breast like a saint you white arms crossed in prayer, | 15 |
And gold on the water, and silver in the air. | 16 |
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I see your soul's parting, its flight I behold; | 17 |
Then glaze at the clay that remains ... mute and cold, | 18 |
At the winding-sheet clung to the coffin's rude sill, | 19 |
At your smile sweet and candid, that seems alive still. | 20 |
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And I ask times unending my soul torn with doubt, | 21 |
O why, pallid angel, your light has gone out, | 22 |
For were you not blameless and wonderfully fair? | 23 |
Have you gone to rekindle a star in despair? | 24 |
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I fancy on high there are wings without name, | 25 |
Broad rivers of fire spanned by bridges of flame, | 26 |
Strange castles that spires till the zenith up fling, | 27 |
With stairways of incense and flowers that sing. | 28 |
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And you wonder among them, a worshipful queen, | 29 |
With hair of bright starlight and eyes vespertine, | 30 |
In a tunic of turquoise bespattered with gold, | 31 |
While a wreath of green laurels does your forehead enfold. | 32 |
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O, death is a chaos, an ocean of stars gleaming, | 33 |
While life is a quagmire of doubts and of dreaming, | 34 |
Oh, death is an aeon of sun-blazoned spheres, | 35 |
While life but a legend of wailing and tears. | 36 |
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Trough my head beats a whirlwind, a clamorous wrangle | 38 |
Of thoughts and of dreams that despair does entangle; | 39 |
For when suns are extinguished and meteors fail | 40 |
The whole universe seems to mean nothing at all. | 41 |
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Maybe that one day the arched heavens will sunder, | 42 |
And down through their break all the emptiness thunder, | 43 |
Void's night o'er the earth its vast nothing extending, | 44 |
The loot of an instant of death without ending. | 45 |
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If so, then forever your flame did succumb, | 46 |
And forever your voice from today will be dumb. | 47 |
If so, then hereafter can bring no rebirth. | 48 |
If so, then this angel was nothing but earth. | 49 |
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And thus, lovely soil that breath has departed, | 50 |
I stand by your coffin alone broken-hearted; | 51 |
And yet I don't weep, rather praise for its fleeing | 52 |
Your ray softly crept from this chaos of being. | 53 |
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For who shall declare which is ill and which well, | 54 |
Is he, or he isn't? Can anyone tell? | 55 |
For he who is not, even grief can't destroy, | 56 |
And oft is the grieving, and seldom the joy. | 57 |
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To exist! O, what nonsense, what foolish conceit; | 58 |
Our eyes but deceive us, our ears but cheat, | 59 |
What this age discovers, the next will deny, | 60 |
For better just nothing than naught a lie. | 61 |
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I see dreams in men's clothing that after dreams chase, | 62 |
But that tumble in tombs ere the end of the race, | 63 |
And I search in may soul how this horror to fly, | 64 |
To laugh like a madman? To curse? Or to cry? | 65 |
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O, what is the meaning? What sense does agree? | 66 |
The end of such beauty, had that what to be? | 67 |
Sweet seraph of clay where still lingers life's smile, | 68 |
Just in order to die did you live for a while? | 69 |
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O, tell me the meaning. This angel or clod? | 70 |
I find on her forehead no witness of God. | 71 |
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