From “Festus”
FOR to die young is youth’s divinest gift;
To pass from one world fresh into another,
Ere change hath lost the charm of soft regret,
And feel the immortal impulse from within
Which makes the coming life cry always, On!
And follow it...

“she is dead!” they said to him; “come away;
Kiss her and leave her,—thy love is clay!”

They smoothed her tresses of dark brown hair;
On her forehead of stone they laid it fair;

Over her eyes that gazed too much
They drew the lids with a gentle touch...

Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold
From “Pearls of the Faith”
  He made life—and He takes it—but instead
  Gives more: praise the Restorer, Al-Mu’hid!

HE who dies at Azan 1 sends
This to comfort faithful friends:—

Faithful friends! it lies, I know,...

It is not death to die,
  To leave this weary road,
And, midst the brotherhood on high,
  To be at home with God.

It is not death to close
  The eye long dimmed by tears,
And wake in glorious repose,
  To spend eternal years.

It...

There is no death! the stars go down
  To rise upon some other shore,
And bright in heaven’s jewelled crown
  They shine forever more.

There is no death! the forest leaves
  Convert to life the viewless air;
The rocks disorganize to feed...

Sonnet Cxlvi.
poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon...

The Melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren...

Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
  Old year, you must not die;
  You came to us so readily,...

From “Verses upon His Divine Poesy”
THE SEAS are quiet when the winds give o’er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes...

From “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Canto V.

  CALL it not vain:—they do not err,
    Who say, that when the poet dies,
  Mute nature mourns her worshipper,
    And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say tall cliff, and cavern lone,
For the departed...