by Coleridge · Cluster: Grief and Loss · Elegy · Clothing and Costume
Abstract
A grief-stricken sonnet anticipating the death of the poet’s sister so soon after a brother’s, expressing the desolation of bereavement and a longing for death rather than a loveless life.
Connections
Motifs: Death Themes & Concepts: Grief and Loss, Mortality, Alienation, Melancholy Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
The tear which mourn’d a brother’s fate scarce dry —
Pain after pain, and woe succeeding woe —
Is my heart destin’d for another blow?
O my sweet sister! and must thou too die?
Ah! how has Disappointment pour’d the tear 5
O’er infant Hope destroy’d by early frost!
How are ye gone, whom most my soul held dear!
Scarce had I lov’d you ere I mourn’d you lost;
Say, is this hollow eye, this heartless pain,
Fated to rove thro’ Life’s wide cheerless plain — 10
Nor father, brother, sister meet its ken —
My woes, my joys unshared! Ah! long ere then
On me thy icy dart, stern Death, be prov’d; —
Better to die, than live and not be lov’d!
1791.