by Coleridge · Cluster: Death · Silence · Bells
Abstract
The dying husband bids farewell to his wife as Death’s bell calls; faith, honour, grief and the widow left in lonely pain. Deathbed lyric.
Connections
Topoi: Memento Mori Motifs: Death, Bells Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Grief and Loss, Faith Forms & Genres: Lyric Characters: Death Personified
Testo integrale / Full text
The hour-bell sounds, and I must go;
Death waits — again I hear him calling; —
No cowardly desires have I,
Nor will I shun his face appalling.
I die in faith and honour rich — 5
But ah! I leave behind my treasure
In widowhood and lonely pain; —
To live were surely then a pleasure!
My lifeless eyes upon thy face
Shall never open more to-morrow; 10
To-morrow shall thy beauteous eyes
Be closed to Love, and drown’d in Sorrow;
To-morrow Death shall freeze this hand,
And on thy breast, my wedded treasure,
I never, never more shall live; — 15
Alas! I quit a life of pleasure.