“Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.”
Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Wallace Stevens 278
American poet 1879–1955Related quotes
The Voiceless; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Presence of death standing by makes a sacrament of tenuous relationships.”
Yonder Mark (ed.), The Quotable Gordimer, 2014.
The Bridge Across Forever (1984)
“I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.”
Source: Life of Pi
2005-09, Address at Stanford University (2005)
Context: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
