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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IMMORTAL, by AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR First Line: Because your hand Last Line: Because you died? Subject(s): Death; Dead, The | |||
BECAUSE your hand Grew tired and laid the busy brush aside; Because your weary eyes forewent their sight, Shall none of all the pictures you had planned Take form and colour for the world's delight -- Because you died? THE hope that kept Through patient years of uncongenial toil Your spirit's lamp sustained with sacred oil, The dream and the desire that never slept -- Did all the wonder-world that was your art Stop with your heart? A TIME so brief After your long probation, to declare Your hoarded visions -- strangely hard it seems! Is even God so rich beyond belief That he from his eternity could spare Your waiting dreams? HE does not waste. A thought once born, forevermore must live. Bountiful spirit, that so loved to give, With what a high delight you now dispense In glorious largess, without stint or haste, Your opulence! I SEE you guide The hand of some young painter to reveal The truth you lived so many years to feel, Your joy in his achievement doubly deep. Your joy . . . ah, how have we the heart to weep Because you died? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND A LYNMOUTH WIDOW by AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR |
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