"To David in Heaven", St. 10.
Undertones (1883)
Context: Upward my face I turn to you,
I long for you, I yearn to you,
The spectral vision trances me to utt'rance wild and weak;
It is not that I mourn you,
To mourn you were to scorn you,
For you are one step nearer to the beauty singers seek.
But I want, and cannot see you,
I seek and cannot find you,
And, see! I touch the book of songs you tenderly left behind you!
“Death always leaves one singer to mourn.”
Source: Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Katherine Anne Porter 43
American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist… 1890–1980Related quotes
“The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.”
The Fire of Drift-wood, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“248. Marry a widdow before she leave mourning.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.”
No. 40. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)
“One goes down to death, and it leaves a mark on one forever.”
On death and the nightly resurrection of the slain on Valhal, Ch. 2
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: Death is for a long time. Those of shallow thought say that it is forever. There is, at least, a long night of it. There is the forgetfulness and the loss of identity. The spirit, even as the body, is unstrung and burst and scattered. One goes down to death, and it leaves a mark on one forever.
“He that fears death, or mourns it, in the just,
Shows of the resurrection little trust.”
XXXIV, Of Death, lines 1-2
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams
“Let me say
and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.”
The Silence.
Poems