Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE GRAVE OF KEATS; THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY AT ROME, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL Poet's Biography First Line: Fair little city Last Line: Strong wine of fruit mature, whose flowers alone we know. Subject(s): Graves; Italy; Keats, John (1795-1821); Poetry & Poets; Tombs; Tombstones; Italians | ||||||||
"Here lies one whose name was writ in water." FAIR little city of the pilgrim dead, Dear are thy marble streets, thy rosy lanes: Easy it seems and natural here to die, And death a mother, who with tender care Doth lay to sleep her ailing little ones. Old are these graves, and they who, mournfully, Saw dust to dust return, themselves are mourned; Yet, in green cloisters of the cypress shade, Full-choired chants the fearless nightingale Ancestral songs learned when the world was young. Sing on, sing ever in thy breezy homes; Toss earthward from the white acacia bloom The mingled joy of fragrance and of song; Sing in the pure security of bliss. These dead concern thee not, nor thee the fear That is the shadow of our earthly loves. And me thou canst not comfort; tender hearts Inherit here the anguish of the doubt Writ on this gravestone. He, at last, I trust, Serenity of sure attainment knows. The night falls, and the darkened verdure starred With pallid roses shuts the world away. Sad wandering souls of song, frail ghosts of thought That voiceless died, the massing shadows haunt, Troubling the heart with unfulfilled delight. The moon is listening in the vault of heaven, And, like the airy march of mighty wings, The rhythmic throb of stately cadences Inthralls the ear with some high-measured verse, Where ecstasies of passion-nurtured words For great thoughts find a home, and fill the mind With echoes of divinely purposed hopes That wore on earth the death-pall of despair. Night darkens round me. Never more in life May I, companioned by the friendly dead, Walk in this sacred fellowship again; Therefore, thou silent singer 'neath the grass, Still sing to me those sweeter songs unsung, "Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone," Caressing thought with wonderments of phrase Such as thy springtide rapture knew to win. Ay, sing to me thine unborn summer songs, And the ripe autumn lays that might have been; Strong wine of fruit mature, whose flowers alone we know. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...1851: A MESSAGE TO DENMARK HILL by RICHARD HOWARD TONIGHT THE HEART-SHAPED LEAVES by JAN HELLER LEVI JEWISH GRAVEYARDS, ITALY by PHILIP LEVINE SAILING HOME FROM RAPALLO by ROBERT LOWELL SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW by LISEL MUELLER HOW DUKE VALENTINE CONTRIVED by BASIL BUNTING FRAGMENTS FROM ITALY: 1 by JOHN CIARDI A DECANTER OF MADEIRA, AGED 86, TO GEORGE BANCROFT, AGED 86 by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL HOW THE CUMBERLAND WENT DOWN [MARCH 8, 1862] by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL |
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