Writers on... Death (A Book of Quotes, Poems and Literary Reflections). Amelia Carruthers
years. Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of gothic tales and mystery novels, central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era.
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Death, to the dead for evermoreA King, a God, the last, the best of friends - Whene'er this mortal journey endsDeath, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep.
For as from open windows forth we peepUpon the night-time star besetAnd with dews for ever wet;So from this garish life the spirit peers;And lo! as a sleeping city death outspread,
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Where breathe the sleepers evenly; and lo!After the loud wars, triumphs, trumpets, tearsAnd clamour of man's passion, Death appears,And we must rise and go.Soon are eyes tired with sunshine; soon the ears
Weary of utterance, seeing all is said;Soon, racked by hopes and fears,The all-pondering, all-contriving head,Weary with all things, wearies of the years;And our sad spirits turn toward the dead;And the tired child, the body, longs for bed.
– Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894), the Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 'Death, To The Dead For Evermore' (date unknown).
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From the winter's grey despair,From the summer's golden languor,Death, the lover of Life,Frees us for ever.
Inevitable, silent, unseen,Everywhere always,Shadow by night and as light in the day,Signs she at last to her chosen;And, as she waves them forth,Sorrow and JoyLay by their looks and their voices,Set down their hopes, and are madeOne in the dim Forever.
Into the winter's gray delight,Into the summer's golden dream,Holy and high and impartial,Death, the mother of Life,Mingles all men for ever.
– William Ernest Henley (1849 - 1903), a British poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem 'Invictus'. These lines come from In Hospital ('XIV: Ave, Caesar'), a collection of poems written during Henley's many and lengthy stays in the infirmary. His left leg had been amputated at the age of nineteen, and during the three years that he was in hospital, penning these works (1873 - 75), he successfully avoided having his right leg amputated as well.
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Whenever anybody whom we love dies, we discover that although death is commonplace it is terribly original. We may have thought about it all our lives, but if it comes close to us, it is quite a new, strange thing to us, for which we are entirely unprepared. It may, perhaps, not be the bare loss so much as the strength of the bond which is broken that is the surprise, and we are debtors in a way to death for revealing something in us which ordinary life disguises.
– William Hale White (1831 - 1913), better known by his pseudonym 'Mark Rutherford'. White was a British writer and civil servant, who trained for the Congregational Ministry but soon disagreed with their teachings. Clara Hopgood (1896).
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And what does it mean – "you'll die"? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five known to us are destroyed and the remaining ninety-five are left alive.
– Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904), the Russian author and playwright considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. Trofimov speaking in The Cherry Orchard; Chekhov's last play which opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on 17th January 1904. The play possesses a dual nature – part tragic and part comic; a characteristic directors have had to contend with ever since its first production.
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Before us great Death standsOur fate held close within his quiet hands.When with proud joy we lift Life’s red wineTo drink deep of the mystic shining cupAnd ecstasy through all our being leaps—Death bows his head and weeps.
– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), 'Death' from Collected Poems (1918). Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, described as one of the most 'lyrically intense German-language poets' - renowned for his inherently mystical writings.
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More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night-wind into that gulf of the inner earth. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly at the floor for fear of being swept bodily through the open gate into the phosphorescent abyss. Such fury I had not expected, and as I grew aware of an actual slipping of my form toward the abyss I was beset by a thousand new terrors of apprehension and imagination. The malignancy of the blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I compared myself shudderingly to the only other human image in that frightful corridor, the man who was torn to pieces by the nameless race, for in the fiendish clawing of the swirling currents there seemed to abide a vindictive rage all the stronger because it was largely impotent. I think I screamed frantically near the last—I was almost mad—but if I did so my cries were lost in the hell-born babel of the howling wind-wraiths. I tried to crawl against the murderous invisible torrent, but I could not even hold my own as I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the unknown world. Finally reason must have wholly snapped, for I fell
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to babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the nameless city:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,And with strange aeons even death may die
Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiver in the night-wind till oblivion—or worse—claims me. Monstrous, unnatural, colossal, was the thing—too far beyond all the ideas of man to be believed except in the silent damnable small hours when one cannot sleep.
– H. P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937), an American author who achieved posthumous fame and critical acclaim through his works of horror fiction. Virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant twentieth-century authors. The Nameless City (first published in the November 1921 issue of The Wolverine).
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Than Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death."
And he said: You would know